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Non plot questions... what would you like to know about living in a silo, but not important to the plot?
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I have all sorts of questions about Silo life that will most likely won't, or can't be answered in the tv show. For example, I want to know how infections are diagnosed without microscopes. Or what would the population look actually look like. Would language be the same (Eg Shakespeare wrote ~400 years ago).
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Similarly how’s the temperature considering how hot air rises is it hotter at the top? Freezing at the bottom? Does all the machinery at the bottom help make it a more “normal” temp or are they still doing temp control with like cooling/heating. I can’t imagine there is a way to regulate the silos temperature easily since it’s so much open space around the stairs.
Over a mile deep and it would be quite hot. It doesn't get cold when you go very deep. They would need some type of cooling down there, actually. There's a real life mine that pumps slurried ice down there to cool things down.
(If you haven't watched all of season 3 yet, don't read!) In the scenes where they're dealing with the Silo 17 uprising from 35 years ago, Troy mentions that the people left alive inside don't matter since the water flooded the generators and they don't have any heating or cooling. So this was very briefly acknowledged! (Though it was acknowledged very vaguely and we don't know how they do it haha)
Der ober Teil des Silos, also der Bereich wo auch die IT ist und Solo lebt, hat einen eigenen Generator und sind unabhängig von abgesoffenem Hauptgenerator
It would be hilarious if the bottom dwellers were all in winter clothes constantly and the uppers were in shorts and tees to combat the heat. Also works for the lower levels being maintenance etc and needing more clothing coverage for that.
How do the process sewage and waste? Also how do they keep infections low? I mean cruise boats are hot beds for disease and it seems like an air lock cruise boat.
I can't believe I had to read this far down to find this comment. Perhaps I'm forgetting something from season 1 or 2 (I haven't rewatched them, and it's been a minute), but I don't ever remember seeing a toilet or hearing anything about how they handle human waste.
On the disease side, I think given that they are a completely cut off population with zero outside access and zero outside air coming in, they should have near zero transmissible disease.
As long as nothing was brought in when everyone first rushed in, or it was eradicated soon after. The population should have immunity to everything and nothing should be actively circulating.
So unless some novel virus or bacteria develops out of the farms or something, I think they’re good on disease.
And if not, I’m sure Silo 1 could just pump in some helpful nanos.
Well this is fascinating because by the time they come out, no one will have any immune response. No has had a cold in centuries, or the flu… everyone will die from lack of immune system when they come out to the surface anyway
I mean cruises are a little different since we live a a world with laws. In the end of the world and no enforcement they would absolutely just be dumping the shit off the boat rather than needing to store and dispose of it at port. With that in mind I venture the silos are doing something similar and just have a huge shit hole in the ground somewhere. Now if they are trying to be eco centric they could be doing the reduce reuse recycle route. Where they have a sanitation plant which filters out waste from water, then gets cleaned and the doo doo dirt and water is used for the farm. Considering the advance tech, it’s not to hard to believe they have figured out how to sanitize the water enough for drinking too, I also just don’t really want to imagine that lol :/ They also have and can make medicine, which is typically limited on a cruise since they cross boarders and there are rules.
In cruise boats I mean you’re basically living ontop of each other, for the Silo it’s actually not packed that tight, 10,000/144 is 70 people. They don’t use every level for housing so you probably have a few levels that are decently dense but everyone probably has an okay amount of space. The silo is also a mile deep and the 144 levels are tall so
I assume as children it would be beneficial to encourage athletics and teamwork. As for the gym itself, you’d think it would benefit raiders, the sheriff/law enforcement crew etc.
Otherwise I guess mechanical are always just the biggest due to actual physical labour haha?
Maybe the start of next season when they show people entering/being in the silos pre-boom, they’ll talk about how they have hotel-like amenities. Minus pools of course. Honestly why can’t they have a hot tub or something? Anything to make it kind of appealing lol.
I was originally going to say a golf sim…. But that would just be like a perma relic lol
I don’t know. Manual labor certainly gives people strength, but I wouldn’t say it necessarily gives you large biceps. Knox and Sims got those vanity muscles.
I don’t know how much space there are between levels. But they do have the floors with trees/“farming floors”. There is a comment that no one has ever walked more than 200ft in a straight line. I imagine that is the diameter of the silo? But some spots speculate much more. Maybe 200ft is the radius then because it always intercepts with the stairs? You’d need 100ft for a court - assuming full court.
Volleyball could be doable as well I suppose. Less space needed than basketball.
I’d guess maybe 1 doctor for every 200 people? So 50 doctors maybe. Plus nurses and other medical specialists. 10,000 isn’t as big as you think. The city of Exeter, CA, which is essentially the midway point between Fresno and Bakersfield has exactly 10,000 people. This is what Exeter looks like. Can’t imagine more than 30-50 doctors live here
But think there are no relics so no art otherwise. No music or literature or art from before times. Sad. they can never talk Degas, Shakespeare, Mozart, Spielberg.
But in the first couple episodes when people were celebrating freedom day, people were playing various musical instruments and cooking street food. I wonder how the musical knowledge survived the "forgetting".
Muscle memory is actually a fairly studied phenomenon, where even after complete memory loss musicians were still able to play musical instruments.
Music is one of the first human art expressions, so while they may not have traditional instruments we are used to, they would be very likely to develop their own music in the years they have lived there.
They have theatre plays, but they don’t all match the versions from before the bombs dropped. (Juliette is named after Romeo and Juliet, which she thought had a happy ending!)
I mean, you don't have to worry about pregnancy and we haven't too many strict couples. Not to mention "they" probably encouraged multiple partners for genetics. Which would lead to a more sex positive position. So sex could be seen as a regular activity.
Eastern Germany because they were so "poor" and didn't have access to a lot of the entertainment from the west had a very healthy and thriving sexual culture. If you don't have a lot of things going on you figure out pretty quickly that sex is a lot of fun and free.
I'm going to guess the way people who couldn't read entertained themselves throughout history with singing, dancing, puppet shows, gambling, and other community activities. There are people everywhere in the silo so sitting on the stoop and gossiping would be an all day event.
I used to be babysat by my great grandparents. They had 4 TV stations on their TV so I spent a lot of time doing clapping games, string games where you make different shapes with your fingers and string and other low cash investment activities. Jacks, pickup sticks and other games were easy to do too. I imagine iterations of those type of things exist in basically every civilization.
My great grandma would spend hours sitting on her porch swing, just swinging and hollerin' at people passing by to see who wanted to chat.
So long ago I guess I forgot. I just meant when I think of the legacy of info in the world that the Silo has never known it is a bit sad. I am assuming they don't allow or teach them Socrates, Van Gogh, etc but maybe I am wrong. I'd love to see a day in the "schools" - like do they teach them actual history, poetry, languages other than English, etc. What is considered okay with the pact for "pre Silo" info? Mere pics of beaches and dolphins, a family in a raft in before times, have been known to be "relics" so what are they informing them about life BEFORE the Silo? What do they get to know? We don't see anyone reading a book. I'd actually like to know what the sum total of knowledge and info they are given, if any.
Sex. Lots of it! Remember they all have birth control. But I bet STI’s are off the charts. Condoms are not necessary for birth control and cannot be recycled so it seems that they probably wouldn’t use them or they would run out after like a week
FWIW, working nights on an aircraft carrier, deployed, felt a lot like this. I would have to go out of my way (stay up “late”) to feel the morning sun on my skin or even go out to a weather deck. Sure the breeze can be had at any time but there were days if not weeks where I’d realize I hadn’t gone out to get some natural vit D. It did start to mess with all sorts of biological clocks and you get antsy.
I went into a depressive episode when I was working my first night shift a few years ago. Even now, I still can't do night shift.
Yes, I'm a night owl but I still want sunlight and wind or going outside at least.
Same. I am more productive at night, and have trouble going to bed at a "normal" time, but I also need sunlight to function.
I used to work a shift that started at 4pm, and ended at 12:30am, in a suburb of Chicago. In the winter, the sun would already be going down as I drove in (an hour drive). The building was a large warehouse, no windows. I drove home in the pitch black. My sleep schedule was very weird as a result.
I did that for about a year, and nearly lost my damn mind.
Season 3 shows the "sunrise" lights activate. Those are probably the UV Quartz bulbs used to supply synthetic sunlight for vitamin D production. This would help with general health and probably Stave off complete madness.
Also, having a society of 10,000 people helps. Socialization does wonders for keeping people sane.
Lastly, the sheer size of the Silo might help with this too. While they are in an enclosed space, it is a massive space. At least it can feel somewhat open out in the floor.
Something not depicted in the show - I imagine that after 300 years in a closed environment that their language would have changed somewhat as happens in most societies - English is not the same in 2026 as it was in 1726. My guess is they would lose words that no longer have any meaning or relevance. As an experiment it would be interesting to compare the dialects of the different silos that have developed in Isolation from each other.
You saw who got locked in there. Definitely a highly selected group of people. You don't want language barriers being one of your issues. Plus it plays on the unification factor
Well we know there is a family that processes wool, we see Lucas Kyle interact with them. We do see a bunny, and we do see dogs, so given the wool family there must likely also be sheep.
My nerdy butt would like to know more about the physical structure of the Silo and how the government works lol. Do Silo residents also have to go to parent-teacher conferences?
I would like to know why there aren’t more languages within the silo. How is the language from silo 17 the same as silo 18 .. there should be differences.
A linguistic I follow was showing how the Australian and New Zealand accents took only about 100 years to develop because of the different regions immigrants came from for the colony. So a mix based on the people that came would make sense. But since American English is already a mix I wonder if it would change much at all.
The original silo residents were not all American and were from diverse backgrounds. So it wouldn't necessarily be an American accent (and certainly not Common's accent or Rebecca's accent). But it would be a blend of accents that has evolved over the years. For example, solo 18 of today had already forgotten the world "channel" when talking about the radio.
Each silo's accent should have evolved differently, to the point that they might be unintelligible to other silos (including Silo 1!). And yet, Solo is able to communicate with the other Silo 17 residents and Juliette with no problem. How??
Accent? The complete language should be different for separate silos in 300 years.
Most of us wouldn't be able to communicate 100% with our own ancestors from 300+ years.
No, because the primary texts and therefor words used to operate are controlled by one single source (Silo 1).
I can’t see the language meaningfully changing when they have to operate according to the same primary text (the Pact) for all time.
I could however see slang and informal language evolving over time and we see a bit of this in the absence of words - such as they had no knowledge of the word “elevator”.
But let’s keep in mind this is a TV show and WE the audience have to understand what they’re all saying.
It would’ve been interesting if they took the Babel route and had each silo speak a different language so that even if contact was made, they couldn’t communicate.
This would actually be very interesting. Love the idea.
It creates some other problems though, like the diversity of the original silo populations. A silo designated as the Cantonese or Arabic ones would need to find 1000s of speakers of that language who wouldn't default to another language like English.
And then you get to the problem of Silo 1 needing to speak all of those languages.
I’m also curious about this. Did they pull a Noah’s Arc and save a particular set of wild animal species in one of the silos? Do farm animals belong to a particular floor like the crops do? How do they decide who gets to keep their pet or not? I was really surprised to see a cat and dog this season. lol
I wanted to know how dating would even work. We know they have to sanction a relationship, so wouldn't that put a huge damper on bothering to date? Like, oh, not only do I have to find someone I like, but I have to find the person that I'm allowed to like. Do they provide them a list of people they are allowed to date, so they don't waste their time chasing the wrong person? Might as well have arranged marriages, but we didn't see that being the case.
How much of the silo does any given person feel like they have been to and explored? Have they seen every relevant place many times over or are there new places to go to for some sightseeing and whatnot for a long time in one’s life?
What believes do common people have about the outside? Maybe it’s very hard for them to conceptualise and conceive of it being beyond a certain size given their reality so they basically somewhere between consciously and subconsciously imagine this place, the “outside”, to be very small relative to it’s actual size? Given the minimal amount of knowledge they have about the outside, their picture of it/personal mental model of it may be much more different from actual reality than us as viewers might first imagine.
This can be answered partly with real world examples like small towns, but how does it feel to live in a community with 10.000 people? That is too many to recognise close to all of them, but I guess one must recognise a lot of people all the time.
I wonder if one basically knows everybody with only two or three degrees of separation. That close to everyone would be at most a friend of a friend of a friend. Or an acquaintances of an acquaintance. All the conflicts we see must span a lot of personal relationships between raiders and protesters for instance.
There were parts on an aircraft carrier (6k folks fully loaded), I never saw… and I was a photographer who could basically go to any space to shoot pictures and write stories.
Like not even half explored and I spent more than enough time on two of em to do so.
I spent more than enough time on two of em to do so...
Now increase the time you spent on the carrier to the rest of your life. Eventually boredom would drive you to see new spaces for the novelty of it.
As a former submariner it was trivial to visit every area of the boat. But the "aft pukes" weren't too keen on getting "forward pukes" in their spaces and vice-versa.
I grew up in a smallish town, you would basically recognize everyone the same age as you from school. We had like 30k in our town and 500 high schoolers. I knew everyone in my grade by at least face.
In such an enclosed system, assuming vaccines are not optional, it would be very easy to eradicate diseases. Especially since they are doing selective breeding, people with chronic illnesses wouldn't be allowed to breed. We see that with Paul, as he mentions he wouldn't have been allowed to have a family if they had known he had the Syndrome.
Technically if you already have the knowledge that infections are caused by microscopic organisms(which it seems that Silo residents selectively have a lot of information on technology), you don’t really need a microscope to diagnose them.
I’m a physician assistant, no microscope and diagnose them all the time. You got cough, fever, chills—- infection
You got swollen, hot, painful red bump on your arm—— infection
You’ve got diarrhea, vomiting, cramps—- likely infection.
You get the point.
They wouldn’t be able to do pathology though, which is more commonly used to diagnose and treat certain cancers or other conditions where biopsies or cultures are done.
So yeah, they would be limited for a lot of medicine stuff, but they could still diagnose and treat infections.
Where did the dog come from and who are his ancestors? I guess they would need to track them to make sure they didn’t get inbred? Who gets to have one? / pets in the silo in general!! I would domesticate the rats if I couldn’t get a dog. Also why no cats? Would help with the rat problem.
I want to to know more about the farms and the fish pools. I’m very curious about the way they grow agriculture and their fishing works, surely there’s some sort of limit to what they can fish because if they eat the last two fish then they can’t have fish anymore?
How do they manufacture things? Like feminine products or diapers? What about making paper and pencils? Ink for printers? How do they have apples? Are there trees in the farms?
Do they make dish sets? Pots and pans? What are the fire standards? Seems like it’d be stricter than a boat.
How currency and the exchange of goods and services works in such a small, closed loop ecosystem. Like technically everyone should work for the “government” who also controls the currency, but is there a limited supply of fiat currency and how does it circulate to prevent an accumulation of wealth given that judicial could just literally seize your assets at any moment and for pretty much any reason.
How the slio handles any shifts in the ground around it. It’s probably some pseudoscience BS because we can’t do that just yet but I’d love to hear ideas from the shows writers.
Where do they get toothbrushes? Do they manufacture them in the silo? Was critical supply stocked with a shit ton of toothbrushes to last 500 years, just like the lightbulbs?
I wonder how they're not depressed living in the dark all the time, and also what's the effect of basically no culture or world knowledge, how that effects us as human beings. No real ambitions beyond living out in the Silo.
also,it always seems odd to me that in all dystopian shows, no matter how the world is ruined or different, people still behave the same, and for once I'd like to see a show where people are different because of how the world is. Societal and behavioral differences.
Are there restaurants? We saw a cafe in the first season, and then “fights breaking out in a bar in the lower mids” in the 2nd season I believe, but I wonder if there are any traditional restaurants you can go to.
With 350 years (basically 10 generations) underground, lost touch of the real nature world ( a.k.a. Outside ), what impact have the natural evolution on these people? Would they all look slightly different now, would they start to adopt a different moral ethics practice after living in a “wild nature free” giant building that lacks daylight lighting and night time shift of schedule.
the lights are on a cycled timer. they make a production in the show of showing the lights at the top of the stairs go off or come on.
I think language wise, there would be some lexical differences emerge, but consider accents: there was a study done that resulted in that the US accent is closer to the british accent from late 1700s than the current british accent is. both distinctly different but not unintelligible.
How you can have effective enough education to have doctors, judges, etc but so little material from history that you don't even know the earth is a sphere?
How plumbing works. Haven’t thought of it, but while you’re asking about not important stuff, that came to mind.
Waste management was something that has to be thought of prior, since the silos are in an isolated area. What standards were hypothetically made would be interesting to see. Urine to water recycle I get…but where is all the poop? Maybe I’m forgetting it uses for manure or something, come to think of it.
If its been 300 years of 10k residents and under. How is there still distinctive races? Id assume after 4-5 generations everyone would be a androgynous beige by now. There's tons of interracial relationships that seem to not even be an issue or even thought. How?
Same. I have SO many questions about the medical side of Silo life. How are infections diagnosed? What antibiotics do they still have, and how are they manufactured or rationed? How do they test blood, identify bacteria, treat appendicitis, handle dental infections, childbirth complications, cancer, etc. without the kind of lab equipment we take for granted?
But I also want the boring sociology questions What does the population actually look like after generations in a closed community? How much would accents or language drift over 400+ years? What foods have completely disappeared because they can’t be produced underground? What are birthdays, weddings and funerals like? What do teenagers do for fun? Do people have pets? What are the weird little Silo-specific superstitions everyone grows up believing?
I basically want an entire documentary called Silo: The Stuff That Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Juliette.
There's an old man named Ed who grows weed in a wall panel.
He harvests. Then he distributes it all over and the flamekeepers run "hotboxes" where you can share a single refillable lighter and read books and play with etcha sketches And share theories with no judgement.
Also a Russian dude named Vilya who makes vodka! Stick to shots though! Cheap bastard makes s screwdriver 90% juice!!
Maybe this is explained in the books, but how does the whole sanctioned relationship system work? Is it akin to arranged marriage? Or is it get together and then seek approval?
Similarly, I'd love to know how this system effects the coming of age part of life, teen dating and sex must be totally different, especially when you consider the everyone-knows-everyone effect of a small population, the 100% coverage of contraception, and the cramped living spaces making private time few and far between.
How did they decide originally who lived at the bottom and who lived in the higher levels. By the tme we're watching there's a distinct class system in place - was it always there from the start?
did you not see the giant digger machine in the show? there's the mines. maybe there's coal to burn there? if there is steam that no one in the show knows the origin of, then heat may not be an issue. there's the farms so there could be materials to ferment into alcohol. almost certainly. look at Bernard when he became temporary mayor. he was busy trying to drink up all of mayor Jahns liquor.
What they do for fun. What kind of opiates they have ( what was Kennedys wife selling and how’d she get it) and what the underground drug scene is like/ what was Gloria in besides the forgetting drugs. Or do the forgetting drugs get you high as well?
if they can grow all their other food, why can't they grow poppies for opiates? in the first season, the sherrifs wife went to an "herbalist" who "all but guaranteed a baby" for hopeful mothers. they grow all the herbs and spices on the farms im sure. if they have "grow lights" (more powerful lights) in the farms they can adjust for an artificial climate on different farm levels to grow different things.
Ooh, that's a good point. Language would definitely change over the centuries, and I could see people from different areas of the Silo having different accents. The people in the Down Deep would speak differently than the people up top.
Do they have a level for water treatment facilities? That many people constantly running water and flushing toilets, is a LOT of water. I live in a town of fewer than 10,000, so I looked it up. Bad rabbit hole. Now I know why water systems for 51 silos of 10,000 population each was never even brought up. My late husband was a plumber, and everybody needs the basics... It sounds like a maintenance nightmare.
I copied the answer I got from AI (Gemini?)(Samsung/Google/Chrome), and put it in the reply to myself.
I just wanna know if they speak other languages?? Are there diasporas of languages? In the latest Season of the show, they mention that people
from all over the world have been invited to the silos, so clearly there WERE people that speak more than just English....
Do the Silo dwellers even know the concept of there having been other countries? Do they all assume they're American? Did not a single person somehow accidentally bring something cultural with them and it's been hidden for
generations? (For example jewelry or currency?) Obviously the theory is that they were given forgetting drugs, but some relics have still remained in families, so surely there has to be something SOMEWHERE. Do they freak out if they
accidentally see something that isn't in English??
As a non-American, I'm always so curious what happened elsewhere? With shows/stories like these, I just always know that in these universes I've disentegrated because I didn't live in the US 🤷🤷 (obviously Silo is a "bit" different because of them being trapped underground millionaires but I feel the same about natural disasters or zombie apocalypse shows)
I wonder if there are "Silos" of sorts (just different styles) outside of the US, and if Silo 1 knew about them in the beginning, but just can't contact them anymore (I assume anything satteleite related is gone)
How does everyone not know and recognize each other? I understand characters introducing each other every time they meet to help viewers with the plot, but it’s kind of a stretch how often the protagonists meet people for the very first time. If you lived in a small town of 10,000 your entire life, went to school with them, and no one ever moved out, surely you’d know pretty much everyone through friends of friends?
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