User blog comment:ZanyDragon/Weapons design/@comment-94.197.39.189-20131106082033/@comment-6024608-20131107110224

All the forests to produce oxygen and wood  have been mentioned and examples seen in BS1.

Nearest oil is like 400 miles away north of Iceland. But remember, Ryan was planning on making Rapture self-sufficient, so he may have organized stockpiles of hard-to-get materials sufficient for 100 years.

But there are plenty of other chemicals you can produce plastics with. Which enough expense you could probably turn kelp into oil and/or coal. (heck, after a while they might come up with genetic engineered bacteria to do it cheaply - possibly in-progress research interupted by Raptures chaos)

When RApture was started, plastics technology was in its infantcy. But at least til 1952 technical info was probably one of the things brought to Rapture and after  1952 one of the things smuggled in.

Testxyz (talk) 11:02, November 7, 2013 (UTC)