The reason things would not decay is that decay usually is a slow kind of oxidation (burning). When it is not this, it is the action of bacteria. But bacteria themselves could not live if they had no oxygen; so they could not make things decay.
Not only would the dead plants and animals remain in good condition, but the clothes people were wearing when they dropped dead would stay unfaded and bright colored through all the storms and sunshine. And the iron poles and car tracks and window bars would remain unrusted. For bleaching and rusting are slow kinds of oxidation or burning (combining with oxygen).
Here are two experiments which show that you cannot make things burn unless you have oxygen to combine with them:
Experiment 94. Light a candle not more than 4 inches long and stand it on the plate of the air pump. Cover it with the bell jar and pump the air out. What happens to the flame?
Experiment 95. Fasten a piece of candle 3 or 4 inches long to the bottom of a pan. Pour water into the pan until it is about an inch deep. Light the candle. Turn an empty milk bottle upside down over the candle. Watch the flame. Leave the bottle over the candle until the bottle cools. Watch the water around the bottom of the bottle. Lift the bottle partly out of the water, keeping the mouth under water.
The bubbles that came out for a few seconds at the beginning of the experiment were caused by the air in the bottle being heated and expanded by the flame. Soon, however, the oxygen in the air was used so fast that it made up for this expansion, and the bubbles stopped going out. When practically all the oxygen was used, the flame went out.
The candle is made mostly of a combination of hydrogen and carbon. The hydrogen combines with part of the oxygen in the air that is in the bottle to form a little water. The carbon combines with the rest of the oxygen to make carbon dioxid, much of which dissolves in the water below. So there is practically empty space in the bottle where the oxygen was, and the air outside forces the water up into this space. The rest of the bottle is filled with the nitrogen that was in the air and that has remained unchanged.
About how much of the air was oxygen is indicated by the space that the water filled after the oxygen was combined with the candle.
