The Testudinoidea of The Tortoise Thing is a titanic, efficient nation, ruled by Tortoise Thing - Arsenal's Greatest Fan with an even hand, and renowned for its ritual sacrifices, keen interest in outer space, and ubiquitous missile silos. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 13.736 billion Tortoises are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. The average income tax rate is 27.4%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The powerhouse Tortoise economy, worth a remarkable 1,251 trillion Buckminsterfullerenes a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Retail, and Woodchip Exports. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 91,104 Buckminsterfullerenes, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.8 times as much as the poorest.

Fixing attendance at women's matches is a matter of "when they go low, we go high... funding", retiring citizens are dragged away in the middle of the night by mysterious men in black suits, sermons are regularly interrupted by businessmen taking phone calls, and half-submerged and flooded seaside hotels are technically still next to the beach. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Tortoise Thing's national animal is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, which can occasionally be seen avoiding garbage in the nation's murky oceans, and its national religion is Assembly of God Pentecostal Christianity.

The Tortoise Thing is ranked 101,889^th in the world and 8^th in Cajetan for Largest Cheese Export Sector, scoring 3,211.7 on the Mozzarella Productivity Index.