(urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"

[David Stockhoff]

On 9/9/2013 12:35 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> I would think that any volume of plastic would indicate either enough time
> for new petroleum to form, or that not enough time had yet passed for
> processed plastic to crumble.

Exactly. Severian doesn't call it plastic, but he refers to colored bits 
of something, so it has already crumbled.

Possibly it's a stretch and simply put there as a general clue to 
Severian's post-oil extraction time period. Since there could have been 
a vast amount of it lying around (probable; in fact I always took it as 
a bit of a joke, sort of dinosaurs-to-oil in reverse) I'd think it would 
be difficult to get a good estimate of how long it would take for all of 
it to disappear.