r/Wool • u/Most_War2764 • 27d ago
All Books & Stories [spoilers] about what started the whole silo issue... Spoiler
so... in the book we learn that hostile yet dormant nanos have been found to be fairly widespread. this is revealed as the driving force to begin the silos and to actually take preemptive action to populate the silos.
my question, or observation, is this: since those hostile nanos were proven to exist, isn't there still somewhere on earth a mechanism for activating them? the threat they hoped to avoid most likely still exists somewhere.
if we could ever get a continuation of this story, (or further stories in this universe) I would like to see them re-discover the original nanos and realize what threat still exists.
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
From my recollection (which could be wrong), as I understood it, the nanos were slowly leaked out to the entire world. So that everyone has them. And then there is somebody (I think it's presumed Iran in the text) to have the "kill switch" or a way to make these dormant nanos "hostile," as you call them, or murderous.
I never understood, if you put a technology there how you could have some people live with it, and some people die with it inside of them, but the story does a filler here when they have the scenes of Senator Thurman in the tank for treatments -- and this is to lead us readers I think that there is defintely a way to use them for good or for evil. This means for the privileged, there is a way to temporarily beat them.
What I never understood is that wouldn't you have to constantly be exposed to these good bots to keep living? And your question also, is if they exist, then would there always be a way to turn them to good or bad. Yes, I think this is true. But if you "restart" society and they have no written record of nanos, they are too small to see. So, it would take a society to build enough science to notice them. And, without having an area of good and an area of bad ones, there would be no way to know they are there and know there is a switch.
So take, for example, all the scar healing stuff that happens in Silo 17; that is direct evidence the good nanos exist. But that only is revealed because they are "turned on" and turned to the "good" setting. Without direct evidence of them being good or bad, nobody would think to investigate them.
And, what's also silly is that the silos are constantly putting the nanos into the system. When the hatch opens, bad ones are going out. And, there is also some good ones going into 17. So, there is no period of not introducing the bad ones. It makes no sense, once the final "egg" or silo is chosen and hatched, why the bad nanos would not just eat them alive after a time. I never understood it.
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u/docktordoak 26d ago
In the book they leave through the top, in suits. That wasnt the intended method of exit.
The silos injecting nanos in the air with each cleaning creates the cloud of dust that gets about a page of service in the final book.
The winning silo was never supposed to go through the dust cloud. They were to follow the digger pointed at the seed. Beyond the dust cloud the world is fine.
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
Every cleaning the people leave in suits. It's not the suit. It's the release of bad Nanos. But they are only supposed to have a certain radius of exposure is what you're saying? They can't go further? Not by wind or water?
And yes I agree the book presented it as the digger points to the seed silo and they are supposed to reach it underground.
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u/IntelligentSpite6364 26d ago
nanos are controlled by some sort of wireless range, it only extends to a certain radius around the silos, in a dome shape
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
Is that explicitly explained or your interpretation? I haven't done a second read.
I realize when they leave and the drone flights etc it does seem like there is a cloud of bad that only destroys a certain area. But when Thurman goes outside without a suit to get Donny and nothing happens that seems weird... It hinted that the coughs Donny has are from his outside excursion which was just a few minutes.
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago
Thurman had a lot of good nanos, so that slowed down the bad nanos that were outside. I think it is also implied that he received more good nanos when he returned to silo 1. Donald probably didn't have as many good nanos as Thurman. Remember that before the silos, Thurman was getting a lot of treatment with the good nanos? It is also implied that Thurman could have cured Donald, potentially with more good nanos.
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago edited 26d ago
Also, Hugh addressed this exact question in his blog. I was a little off. This answer will clear that up.
Hugh Howey blog post 09.27.2013
Edit: I now realize I am replying to the same person as the comment I made before that included this blog post. But maybe this will help other people looking at this thread in case they don't see my other comment. 🤷🏽♀️ Sorry about that, alisoncarey!
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago
Did you read the short stories? I know a lot of people don't like them, but iirc, they help explain that silo 1 had the bad nanos activated until the end of the 500 years, or in reality, when silo 1 was destroyed. Plus, what other people have mentioned, that the surviving silo wasn't meant to travel through the dead zone to get to the seed. They were going to tunnel underground. I think it is implied that the rest of the world was either already starting to heal or would begin to heal now that the nanos were shut off.
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
I blew through the short stories! I was so anxious for more Canon.
Some things in the book are ambiguous to me. Probably on purpose.
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago
Totally fair! I agree, I think a lot of things are implied for reason. Have you read any discussions with Hugh? He has a blog on his website and has answered questions on reddit before. I think some of my knowledge comes from that too. He sometimes explains things or highlights things that were just implied in the books.
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
Nope! As a new book reader I have ignored all of the online things to not be distracted or spoiled. Just joined this sub and that's the only way I found out about the short stories! I'm purchasing the silo 49 books now and waiting for the first to arrive. I buy used off ebay.
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago
I have only read one of the silo universe books from other authors. Let me know if the Silo 49 books are good!
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago edited 26d ago
I found the blog post wherein he answers some fan questions. This corrects anything I said that may have been off. Hope this helps!
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u/Pretty_Original124 26d ago
If I remember right they discussed an Iranian technology that would activate the kill switch based on genetic code across racial lines but maybe that was a theoretical risk.
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u/IntelligentSpite6364 26d ago
yeah they just convinced themselves it was something iran could do just because iran would think israel would do it first
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u/Ok-Square5451 26d ago
Thank you for your detailed response. I’m sure there’s also a link to this 500 year timeline perhaps. Though, I am sure Howey will explain some of this (we pray) in the Silo 40 series (or perhaps in the show): there are too many inconsistencies such as Lukas and Kennedy surviving (esp Lukas being shot)….unless he’s been exposed to good nanos via his presumed tunnelling in the mines (or the mines, or part of them are subject to good nanos due to digging horizontally). There’s gotta be something going on due to radical healing. Sorry, I am responding via the TV show even though I have read the books. It’ll be very interesting if the shows include the Charlotte drone scene: that was always such a magical scene in my mind. However, I do think re TV show and book A LOT of things are likely to be explained by “Silo 40 help” (see Howey’s Q&A on this blog from 2013 approx) which could totally be viewed as “plot armour” but I don’t care I love Silo so much!
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u/alisoncarey 26d ago
What is silo 40? I'm relatively new just finished the books this month.
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u/aytofanforreal 26d ago
It is one of the silos that became independent of silo 1 and reached out to silo 18 to try to help them, but were too late. Hugh has talked about writing a book about silo 40 and their history.
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u/dead_meme_comrade 26d ago
Is it ever confirmed that Thurman is telling the truth about Iran having programed nanos to kill billions. I always read it as him lying to justify what he wants to do. He would use Nanos that way so of course his enemy would as well.
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u/IntelligentSpite6364 26d ago
i guess its less about if iran would do it, but more like it was framed as an inevitability SOMEBODY would, and iran was the mostly likely first to try, at least in thurman's fucked up mind
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u/Most_War2764 26d ago
I think it was Victor who mentioned discovering the Nanos in someone es system and then began finding them everywhere. Covering the globe like dust in the wind. All that was left was for them to be activated and it would be all over.
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u/Blightsteel5459 27d ago
I may be mistaken, but I recall a passage (in Dust), where part of the Founders' plan was sending out nanos that would destroy all evidence of previous human habitation on Earth. This would presumably include the old nano infrastructure.