Seasons of Silo: spirals of (contr)addiction
Spoiler alert for the first three seasons
TL;DR
I review Silo, the Apple TV series, with plenty of spoilers across all seasons. I am a fan and an addict of the show despite its obvious shortcomings. I became obsessed enough to create a systems map of the show’s loops and contradictions for your enjoyment.
A Reluctant Convert
I came late and reluctantly to Silo, the Apple TV series that has just ended its third season and teased us already with a trailer to the fourth. I did not find the premise of “thousands living in a silo underground” in a distant and toxic future very convincing. But I must admit that I found myself unable to turn away, and became increasingly addicted with each new season. I now join the fanbase in highly anticipating the release of the concluding season in summer of 2027.
I will not dwell on the many strong points in the series, I just name a few. The characters, led by Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) are plucky, curious, passionate and even the villains often turn out to be heroes in most cases, or to have a heroic moment. The plot zooms out from the everyday micro-concerns of the population of one silo (who will win the reproduction lottery this year?), to the discovery of other siloed populations (we are not alone), to a growing macro-level understanding of why they have all been trapped/sheltered in these holes for centuries. Hugh Howley’s trilogy (which I have not yet read) has provided Graham Yost (Executive Producer) with material for a rich and tantalising epic, and a plot that spans four centuries full of twists, dark visions, and people you can’t help caring about.
Breaking the “Silo”
Despite all this, there are so many ways the internal logic of the habitat breaks down, that I couldn’t help but obsess over little details. And the details mounted till I couldn’t resist first sketching them, then vibe coding an interactive systems map that summarises all the key elements, connections, and contradictions that I could find in the Silo universe. Have a look at it on Github Pages: https://gauden.github.io/silo-systems-map/. If you fork the repo, you can modify the map to your liking by editing the input file, written in the Graphviz DOT language.
The silo has been praised as the ultimate example of a repair ecosystem. Charlie Sorrel runs through the key elements in an iFixit blog post). He covers food, water, glass, the tinkerer’s workshop, the recycling chute, the improvised weapons used by the Mechanicals, and the role of women in repairing and recycling.
His blog hints at the niggling doubts that stopped me suspending my disbelief. Every time a sheriff pulled out a notebook from his pocket: where did the paper come from? Who made the pencil? Whenever anyone drinks a glass of water, I imagined they had access to groundwater and distillation, but I had to ask: who repaired the pipes? Who replaced the washer in the taps? As a medic: who trained the new physicians, surgeons, nurses? How long before evidence-based practice decayed into ritual? Who makes the anaesthetic?
Mind the Language
Probably the most troubling doubt lay in language and culture.
I remember being stunned when I first read Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” and met the narrator and his friends:
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
From terms like kartoffel to devotchka, from baboochka to gazetta, there were hints of Russian, even to someone who had never encountered the language. From the first encounter with the world of “A Clockwork Orange” we know that society has changed radically because language has changed. Burgess’ achievement lies not in telling us about the mores, norms, or pacts of Alex’s society, but in plunging us into it through the language.
Herein lies my greatest series of doubts about Silo society. Their language has not evolved from modern day American English. The different silos are able to talk and understand each other. Even children, isolated in another silo, still speak and understand Juliette when she turns up. All these silos are separated from each other, and from the before times, by a period as long as today’s language is separated from Shakespeare’s. Furthermore, the levels of the Silo, prohibited as they are from building an elevator and therefore not mingling at all on a daily basis, and living lives that have very different concerns, would have evolved language and code that would have become well-nigh incomprehensible across levels over the three centuries or more of this story.
Different social networks evolve different languages. Language itself evolves based on frequency of use of certain terms, and frequently used words tend to survive much longer than infrequent ones. We should have expected that in this period of evolution, three hundred years, at the very least we would have Silo 17 English and Silo 18 English dialects, or Mechanical, Mid, and Up Top dialects, markedly different, short of being mutually unintelligible. The silo environment itself would generate extraordinary pressure for new vocabulary around vertical location, rationing, cleaning, relics, birth control, social classes, and particular machines and parts.
Down the Rabbithole
Hence my obsession. From musing about language, I found myself drawing maps of the political, economic, social, environmental, and cultural themes of Silo. Some inherent contradictions leapt out at me.
The deepest contradiction lies in The Pact itself as a tool for survival. Survival needs adaptation, the Pact enforces stasis. As the infrastructure ages, as materials and equipment run out, ingenuity is needed to develop new technology, to document and pass on knowledge and skills, to adapt to new constraints.
Once you notice that, you automatically start finding other inconsistencies, in the metabolism of materials, in culture and society, in knowledge and innovation. As my map grew larger and denser, I wrote it up in a format I use often for similar projects: the Graphviz DOT language.
Finally, I thought to ask Astra to visualize the map in a friendlier shape and I publish it on Github Pages for your enjoyment and experimentation.
Welcome to the rabbithole!