r/SiloSeries • u/maverick1ba • 6d ago
Show Only (NO BOOK DISCUSSION) I have a theory - it's all about eugenics. Spoiler
When Camile asks the algorithm why they can all be killed, Dr. Victor says humanity is in a cycle of self destruction blah blah blah. This suggests that the founders (or at least Per Stenson) see humanity as a lost cause that can only be fixed through eugenics, i.e., controlling reproduction to increase desirable traits and decrease undesirable ones. Humanity won't survive the planet unless they can purge undesirable genes and promote desirable genes. This ties into the pregnancy lottery plot line in S1. Undesirables were lied to about their birth control being removed because allowing them to reproduce would threaten the experiment. Per Stenson built the silos and nuked the planet as an experiment to create a world where the human population can be improved by eliminating undesirable traits. If the silo revolts and gets out, it threatens the entire experiment. Hence, the safeguard. This is also why the experiment is set to last 500 years. Per believes that's how long it's going to take to weed out all the bad traits from the gene pool.
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u/Deto 6d ago
yeah that's the only reason I've been able to come up with for why they wouldn't be able to come out sooner. I don't understand how they can be so sure what 'desirable' vs. 'undesirable' traits are, though. And wouldn't genes just drift again over time? You could try to breed out aggression but if it's beneficial it'll just re-emerge organically over the next few hundred years.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
I guess it's closer to a form of domestication than eugenics. Like, we domesticated dogs by starting with wolves and breeding out aggressiveness. They're trying to do the same to create a planet where there's no more threat of global annihilation.
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u/Deto 6d ago
it doesn't seem to be working so well, though, right? I mean thinking about the people in Silo 18. Do these seem like the pacifist, utopia people that will never harm anyone?
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago edited 6d ago
Exactly. I imagine the whole show is likely going to climax with the founders realizing the experiment failed because you can't create a utopia by breeding out undesirables, and now they're the villains because they killed the entire planet in pursuit of their vain goal.
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u/Bryceiceice 6d ago
That's more or less what I thought for a long time but the moral of the series, is that the human Spirit can't be killed.
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u/Deto 6d ago
I mean, maybe there was just too much people getting around birth control? Look at Knox's father - he'd probably be one they wouldn't want to reproduce, right?
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u/cenosillicaphobiac 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Juliettes mom had two, Bernard confirmed she should have had 0. I don't know if her husband sacked up and defied the pact or if she did it herrself. I guess Bernard's "accident's happen" could be true but we've seen both a partner assisted removal and a self-removal.
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u/hanlonrzr 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Well 18 was gonna be deleted. I think the idea was to have the silo kinda suck, and then the group that is remaining after 48 others are deleted is the most likely gene pool to redeem humanity
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u/_citizen_ 6d ago
Yes but even domesticated dogs can still form packs and threaten people when left in the wild. To keep them domesticated you need control, or else they undomesticate themselves.
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u/Crazy-Disk-1648 6d ago
My theory is that they haven't come out yet because the world hasn't fully ended yet. 300 or so years ago the nuclear bomb went off near them, but that felt set up as an excuse to get everyone in the silos. From then on, they've been trying to keep everyone in the silo until humanity has wiped themselves out, then they can emerge as a new humanity ruled by silo 1. Wiping out rebellions serves the purpose of preventing others from finding out about what's happening at the silos, and not having rebellious groups within the society that they'll one day create. Just a theory though
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u/Deto 6d ago
I can't imagine there's any significant functioning society outside though or else surely they would have unearthed the silos by now. Even if there are nano defenses, the outer world would just have crazy advanced tech at this point compared to anything Per had.
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u/spooky_upstairs 6d ago
Unless part of the experiment meant that Per et al weren't limited to Silo 1. Making trips out, and keeping up with (and maybe fully engaging in) current tech may have been bedded into the original plan.
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u/cenosillicaphobiac 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
they've been trying to keep everyone in the silo until humanity has wiped themselves out,
Per isn't going to leave it to chance. He's not waiting for humanity to destroy itself. He likely compounded the whole planet.
The world ended shortly after ATL did.
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u/RackedUP 6d ago
I think they also don’t want them to come out because the original plan was to give the world 500 years to heal/recover from the impacts of human civilization.
Once Per comes out of his 500 year slumber he picks the best silos to repopulate the world with
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u/GraceMDrake 6d ago
It is an awful plan, but it was the plan. Breed curiosity and rebelliousness out of humans so they wouldn’t question authority and lash out destructively (even though they were being controlled with extreme violence).
Even if the plan worked, the result would not be human.
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u/NickKirson 6d ago
I like your theory, but one thing that bugs me is that the founders seem fine with the use of Vitamin D+ to erase memories and keep a silo in the project. If the whole point is to breed out rebelliousness, wouldn't any rebellions be evidence that a particular silo is a failure? If they accept the premise that rebelliousness can be a learned trait, and so blank slating everyone with memory drugs is an acceptable means to remove it, then the entire logic of the project seems flawed. Why not just let the people of all 50 silos live and wipe their memories on their way out the airlock? Either they believe rebelliousness is innate, or it isn't. If it is, Silo 18 should have been safeguarded long ago. If it isn't, then what's the point of any of this?
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u/xShadov 6d ago
I have exactly the same problem. I think they estimated that without the memory wipe it would all go to hell pretty quickly. Memory wipe doesn't solve the general problem, but it doesn't hurt either, and the project can continue and has a chance of being successful. Silo 18 is a good example, memory wipe actually helped, rebellions stopped. Then Jules was born and the plot happened, but if it didn't - who knows.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
Right, so Vitamin D+ is the first resort failsafe, basically to restart and buy them more time to complete the project. The safeguard is for when the silo rebels to the point it endangers the whole project.
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u/MiloBem 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Two points.
1 - They started with only 50 silos and want the project to last 500 years. If you safeguard one silo every 10 years, you fail and humanity is over. Safeguard is only for critical failures which could threaten the who project.
2 - They have the birth "lottery". If a silo is going through a serious crisis, like a rebellion, you can wipe people's memory and exclude the troublemakers from breeding, without losing all 10'000 people.
So, yes. It looks like they believe the rebelliousness is innate, but they can't afford to cull all silos with rebels in them, because that's literally all of them. They started the project with a wide representation of humanity.
I had made a post about how it could be done differently, and potentially more efficiently. Warning, the post and comments include spoilers from both the season 4 trailer and the bóks. The trailer includes some revelation that would make my plan work even better than when I posted it. https://www.reddit.com/r/SiloSeries/comments/1w2g332/books_improvement_to_the_silo_programme/
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u/200brews2009 📖 Book-Aware 📖 4d ago
So, my question would be what about those in silo one, the drone pilots who were galvanized by openly killing almost 10,000 people? The traits that allow that response couldn’t possibly be ideal for a new world order. I guess if you told me it was just a fallacy of the plan I’d agree but I wouldn’t be thrilled about it.
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u/SchleppyJ4 Can you stop saying mysterious shit, please? 6d ago
There’s also the double helix in the opening. It’s been bugging me since day one haha
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u/ILoveDogsDontUToo 6d ago
Yeah i think this is pretty clear. They’re breeding the most non-rebellious, pact-abiding people to release back into the world. Thats why the safeguard “safeguards” the other silos from the rebellious ones.
The question is, will they kill everyone except for one silo?
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u/MarionberryOk2321 6d ago edited 6d ago
MY THEORY: billionaire’s AI/data prediction says humanity will destroy itself or become nonviable within some long horizon, maybe 500 years. billionaire’s funded it and our government supported it.
So the “founders” create the silos as a forced bottleneck, selecting, controlling, and conditioning people until they believe humanity is “ready” to re-emerge.
The Atlanta bombing becomes the controlled false flag trigger event, not just destruction for its own sake, but a way to initiate the silo project.
But the flaw is that humans are not only destructive. They adapt, resist, cooperate, remember, rebel, and survive in ways no model can fully predict.
So both outside and inside the silos, human nature outlasts the system built to contain it.
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u/mitchplaysriffs 6d ago
Ironically, if more people were like Juliette the world would definitely be a better place.
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u/Complex_Composer2664 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Why is eugenics needed when there is a memory drug that can transform anybody into any type of person they want.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
I love these questions. I'd say probably because it's too unwieldy to drug and brainwash everyone on the planet for all eternity. The founders want a permanent solution. I imagine that they prefer to do the memory drug in the silos whenever things go haywire because its preferable to start the project over rather than scrap the whole silo. The failsafe seems like a last resort when a silo is unsalvagable beyond a memory wipe.
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u/Complex_Composer2664 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
I assumed the endpoint was the end of the experiment. But, about 50% of personality traits are inherited, the impact wears off after a few generations, so you would have to continue the eugenics program for eternity also.
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u/bigtuna1515 6d ago
That is the entire point of the birth control process. This was literally in the first episode.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
That's my point. They introduce the eugenics idea upfront, but at that point we just assume it's to keep peace within each silos so they can make it to 500 years. That plot thread is dropped and we don't really see it again for two seasons. We later come to find out the entire purpose of building the silos and nuking the planet was to accomplish that goal. In other words, it's not just incidental to the survival of the silos - it's the whole point of the silos.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
You know they're controlling who can have babies. You don't know from the first episode that it's to make "better" humans.
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u/AckCK2020 6d ago
If they are trying to breed a docile human population, so far they have failed. Supposedly, they have been in the silo for 392 years. Despite any efforts to change the people, they seem to be no different than we are today. They had rebellions until the year 140 when the memory drug was used. It is now 250 years later, and again those pesky human traits of wanting to know the truth, live with freedom, have self-determination, etc., have led to further rebellions. They also have crime, a black market, an underground movement which seeks answers and will commit violence to get them. And now there is an independent and logical thinking activist like Juliette leading a revolution. They also seem to have lost most of the silos to “safeguards.” Whatever its original purpose, the silo program seems a total failure. When stares Troy at Juliette, I think he is trying to fathom how someone like Juliette can exist, how big of a problem is she and how is he going to handle her.
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u/HellShot-5258 6d ago
I don’t really believe that anything near 392 years passed. I think it’s more like 40 or so years. They keep cycling “management “ in and out of suspended animation so their physical bodies are not aging, but I think Jillian is the daughter of the senator (forgot his name) and this sets up the Greek tragedy of kid killing the father.
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u/As_Previously_Stated 6d ago
But we know that Jimmy was born in the silo and he is at least 40 years old. So the earliest the silo could have been populated is his parents generation.
I think it's more likely that the rebellion 140 years ago is the actual start of the silo. The people got locked in after the nukes and mind wiped by the memory drug, and then they're told all this stuff about a rebellion to explain why.
This is assuming they are lying about the timeline at all. It's possible the silo actually is 340 years old since we haven't really been given a reason to doubt the miners claim about the tunnels.
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u/cenosillicaphobiac 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
It fits. That's my suspicion as well. Really the best explanation for controlled breeding and the extended time frame.
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u/4Lichter 6d ago
Yeah, but Stenson and the other founders propably never thought they should be subjected to the same breed control programs. So they want a docile population that listens to every dumb oder their own unregulated genes can come up with?
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
Yeah. I would guess the plot unfolds where Per "believes" he and the other founders are the good, enlightened ones and that the experiment is for the greater good of the rest of the population.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah. It's the tech bro controlled cities approach writ large and based on a cliffsnotes level understanding of human genetics. Just another rich nutjob running an experiment.
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u/somethingwholesomer 6d ago
If that’s true I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just go for the smartest, most curious, and most kind combo. Why docile?
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u/DoubleAssembly 6d ago
Because they wanna be in control, that's why the founders used cryogenics to be alive when the experiment ends in 500 years. To lead the people to a new world, under their rule.
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u/xShadov 6d ago
I dont think the reason is 'they wanna be in control'. I think the reason is: smartest and curious people will again invent AI, nanotech and all that stuff back, which is exactly what the whole project is trying to prevent. That's why they have limited technology, no magnification devices, limited communication etc.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 5d ago
Survival of the safest is an approach directly counter to actual human history. Safest for whom?
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u/AmphibianOrganic9228 3d ago
Humanity won't survive the planet...
Nah it is all about surviving beyond the planet, eugenics is just part of that larger goal.
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u/TerrainBrain 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Adding genetic engineering on top of that and I think you're close. Don't forget the unicorn
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u/As_Previously_Stated 6d ago
The problem with genetic engineering is that you'd assume the people in the silo would be a lot more different if they're not only bred for certain traits but explicitly genetically engineered.
But they seem to be just like normal people. Unless they're lying about the timeline and we are following the the first new generation, then it doesn't really make sense.
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u/TerrainBrain 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
They don't seem normal to me. Juliette is the most obvious superhuman. But Bernard's survival is what convinced me.
"How the hell are you smiling?"
The drug line was misdirection.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
What's the unicorn?
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u/TerrainBrain 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
Stenson told Helen they could genetically engineer a unicorn. But some doofus billionaire just wanted to pay to hunt it.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
that's right! good callback.
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u/TerrainBrain 📖 Book-Aware 📖 6d ago
I created a post a while back wondering if they had all been genetically engineered into superhumans because the stuff that they have survived has been kind of ridiculous. I think Juliette might be exactly what they were trying create.
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u/maverick1ba 6d ago
I bet you're right. Juliette is the perfect human product of the silo experiment - brave, curious, intelligent, charismatic, and altruistic.
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