Why is the Silo here? And where is here? And what is out there? Is there even an out there?!
!! SPOILERS BEWARE - BELOW ARE THEORIES BASED ON IN-SHOW EVENTS !!
Not since LOST nearly TWO DECADES ago, have we had a show with such potential for mystery. Silo has many mysteries, and fans of the show will no doubt go on wild flights of fancy when imagining the answers to the shows great questions. I am one such fan, and after the first three episodes (and not having read the books) here is a rundown of my theories so far.
In Episode 1, we are introduced to "relics" in the form of a computer hard drive. While computers and drives seem to be common place, this particular drive is from "before". "Before" is an unspecified time, but we are told that generally the cut-off point is 140 years ago, when a rebellion occurred. There is no indication how long after the Silo was built and then populated that the rebellion happened, though the drive does reference Year 96. The rebellion in question came from a faction who wanted to open the main doors of the Silo, and therefore (possibly) destroying the society living underground. The above world is thought to be a ruined and charred place that is completely uninhabitable for humans, for reasons unknown or forgotten.
The current Outside landscape is shown on view screens all around the Silo; a grey wasteland of a few rocks and a single tree in the shot. There are also bodies in white suits. Silo dwellers can request to go Outside at any time, wherein they are immediately segregated from society, and after a short ceremony, are kicked out of the door to suffer whatever perils await them on the surface. They are not unprotected though; the Silo has a fashionable line of hazmat suits for such occasions. Another part of this rite is being requested to "clean" - the camera that watches the Outside accumulates dust and needs to be wiped down. Bets are taken on whether the outcasts will clean or not, even in the face of grand defiance.
And here is where the mysteries start...
The Outside is lush and Green? How sure about that are you?
The relic hard drive is seen to contain schematics for the Silo, with a tunnel below the base of the structure - which we'll come back to. Also, a video file seems to show an Outside that is Green, lush and life sustaining, with a main single tree in bloom and birds flying over in a V formation. This prompts Allison Holston to go Outside, claiming she'll clean the camera if the world is in fact Green - which she then does, because it apparently is. 2 years later and her husband Sheriff Holston follows her out the door, and we see what we are led to believe he believes he is seeing (I know, right?).
The basic theory then becomes that the world ISN'T a wasteland, but is green and lush, and the camera system is somehow manipulating the image to show the Silo inhabitants a false landscape. I am of the opinion that this is wrong, and the truth is even more convoluted…
What Holston sees upon leaving the Silo is... a main single tree in bloom and birds flying over in a V formation.
I don't know if this is just poor production values (unlikely with how good the rest of the show looks), or maybe to drive the point home harder (come on, believe your audience has SOME smarts...) but we are to believe that only a single tree (or at least very sparse) has grown in the last 50 - 250 years (time is undetermined so far), and that birds would be flying over that exact spot, in the EXACT same formation?
How can a green and growing, or even a dark and dying, world stay exactly the same for hundreds of years? How can we see the exact same number of birds in the same formation in the same place, over and over? We see bodies on the viewport, but not one of the three are to be seen when Holston looks around… but then why does he walk towards where his wife is "lying"?
Segue: Another thing I find interesting as a viewer, that when we see what Holston sees, it is obviously CGI. Did the budget of the show not extend to finding a real, small outdoor space? I am aware that shows such as The Mandalorian are using Unreal Engine backdrops in real time to give the actors a better understanding of the imagined world around them, but I'm left wondering why the world we are shown through his visor looks like a 3Dmark Benchmark run. It is also vaguely interesting that the wasteland and the Green aren't 100% copies - the trees and landscape are the same, but the number of, size of, position of the rocks isn't exactly the same - neither are there any bodies.
It's helpful that the area around the Silo door seems to be in a shallow crater, limiting the view to the horizon and needing to contain a tiny amount of false landscape. I think we are actually looking at a Truman Show-esque device, where the edge of the crater is not a crest of land, but is in fact the edge of the floor of simply another level of the Silo!
Even weirder, when the power shuts off and the view screen glitches for a second and the Silo inhabitants see the Green, it is STILL THE EXACT SAME SCENE; the same weather, the same time of day. Supposedly this is later on in the day, around 10pm (though we have no way of knowing how this corresponds to the real world day / night cycle. The wasteland variation definitely looks like twilight, but the Green variation is obviously the middle of a summers day! I don’t believe they even have a day / night cycle variation for the fake lush scenery. Of course, this could be just another oversight by the show producers, but I really hope not.
It's Silos all the way down... maybe...
I believe the Silo not only doesn't lead to Outside, but in fact isn't even a Silo near the surface!
The Green area, that doesn't change in decades, is simply a construct BETWEEN Silos. The walls are panels that show a looped video. Or possibly, just like those in the Silo, we as viewers are being lied to. Holston never actually says that it's green and lush, though he does note that his wife was right. What if, what he is ACTUALLY seeing, is just a large concrete room. He would want the Silo inhabitants to see that; that would be worth Cleaning for.
Again, I don't think we can take anything we are seeing at face value. If the bodies aren't there in the Green, but are on the viewports in the Silo, there must be a cut-off point in the timing of the engineered overlay where a predefined CGI scene plays out. By that I mean, Holston walks towards a spot, and when he's far enough away from the camera, the viewports no longer show "real time" and become computer generated.
But then, why does he walk over to his wife's body. Which isn't there… What if the tree isn't a tree, but is in fact a doorway, with the tree superimposed? That's why Allison walked that way, that's why Holston walked that way. The doorway would lead to the base of the Silo above our Silo, with people ready to remove the unconscious bodies lying on the floor. Wait, what about the poison? I don't believe the theory that suits have poison in them, but I am willing to go as far as the suits rendering the wearer unconscious.
Why do I believe that there is a Silo above the Silo? Because I believe there is a Silo UNDER our Silo.
Three pieces of information make me think this…
- The Machine that drilled the Silo - We are told that what we have seen is "what is left" of the Machine, and while there's a second throwaway line of things being stolen over time, I believe this may be a red herring and that it was a multi-stage device, and that another part drilled yet further down.
- The Tunnel on the schematic - I am aware that it is shown going sideways, but it isn't shown going that much further than would be needed to then dig downwards to install a staircase between two Silos. It could be that there are multiple Silos next to each other, but that's such an obvious ploy that I hope that's not the case. It's also not backed up by…
- The Steam Pipe - The pipe comes directly into the bottom of the Silo, but a character says very pointedly that they don't know WHERE the steam comes from. Of course they might just not know what geothermal vents are given the loss of information over the years, but it could very well point to a man made source of the steam - another silo!
If the tunnel DOES lead to the "top" of a lower Silo, and people are kicked out of that Silo in a similar manner, it would follow that their version of the apocalypse isn't a poisoned Earth, but a flooded one, like biblical Noah. I presume that now Julliette is no longer afraid of water (good grief at that plot line), she'll make her way into the pool. I will not be surprised if she not only finds bodies floating around in the water, but that they are wearing white suits...
Other theories... You're not wrong, but I hope you are...
I don't believe the Silo is a generator for an above ground society. People already willingly go to work to keep the lights on, why trap ten thousand people underground for 200 years? Also, not telling the people running your power plant that there are others relying on the power, is a great way to one day have your own power cut off, for reasons unknown to your society. One relatively small turbine is not going be generating an extra abundance of power to sustain a future society, and it wouldn't need ten thousand people to keep it functional, given that they barely are doing so. I do believe the Silo(s) are self contained. Otherwise the story is just The Matrix series of films.
I'll admit I don't have a solid theory why people aren't allowed out of the Silo en masse - and that it does feed into being basically slave labour for power generation or some other neferious scheme. But it does also make sense the Silo above Our Silo wouldn't want a massive influx of people from a lower Silo; for now, we'll gloss over that...
I'm also uncomfortable with the idea of many Silos just "around". Building a number of Silos in a single column with a multi-stage Machine would be much easier than multiple Machines, especially at the (possible) end of the world. It would also be weird that you would build multiple Silos close enough together to be connected by a human sized tunnel. So the Silos are quite distant from each other, the tunnel is still a mystery, and the story is just the Fallout series of games.