Reserves of table crumb fell to their lowest recorded level this week, prompting the Ministry of Supply to issue a statement urging households to remain calm, and prompting three senior ministry officials to depart immediately for the coast.

Retail blobs report that the shelves are not empty so much as thoughtfully arranged to appear less empty — a practice the industry calls "facing" and which consumers have begun to call something else.

The numbers, such as they are

The ministry's own figures put national reserves at "adequate." Pressed for a unit, a spokesblob clarified that adequate was itself the unit, and that converting it to weight would be "premature."

Economists at the Institute for Applied Roundness estimate the true figure at somewhere between four days and eleven weeks, a range they described as "honest, if unhelpful."