Silo: Did The Safeguard Destroy Silo 17? Does Solo Know About The Algorithm?

Ever since the show introduced us to the Algorithm, there’s a question that has been bugging me constantly. Why the hell doesn’t the Algorithm make an appearance in Silo 17? I mean, the ninth episode of season 2 made it abundantly clear that it has its eyes and ears everywhere in the silo, even in the underground tunnel. And since it’s common knowledge that all silos are built in a similar way, then why isn’t there any hint of the Algorithm in Silo 17? Well, I have a theory, but I can’t discuss it without bringing up a few points from the second book of the Silo trilogy. So, if you are game for that, then follow me through, and if you’re not, then you have already been warned, and this might be a good time to save yourself from the spoilers ahead.

Spoiler Alert

In the ninth episode of season 2, the Algorithm warned Lukas Kyle of the “safeguard,” which is nothing, but a self-destruction protocol installed in every silo in the event of a successful rebellion or a security breach, like if someone accessed the forbidden tunnel. Without getting into the details, the Founders didn’t want the residents to make contact with other silos, and whenever a silo went rogue, they pushed the button to terminate it in order to save other silos from the threat. It’s like burning down a field to kill the blight. But even though such a protocol existed, Silo 17 wasn’t affected by it. As Jimmy Conroy, aka Solo, told Juliette Nichols in the third episode of season 2, during the uprising, the rebels managed to open the airlock, and they all went out into the open, where they were all killed by an unknown “dust.” According to Jimmy, it was possible that “the poison that had been away for a bit” returned and killed everyone. The clue here is that this dust only affected those who “went out” or were standing near the airlock chamber. It didn’t affect Solo or the survivors of Silo 17 and trust me on this: there were a lot of people who survived the uprising, most of them died because the generator room was flooded, and they ran out of food. Episode 9 further confirmed this fact.

At the risk of repeating myself, the residents of Silo 17 weren’t killed by the “safeguard” or the Algorithm, because whatever the self-destruction protocol does exactly, it is going to kill everyone inside the silo, not just those on the outside. In short, if the “safeguard” had ever been triggered in Silo 17, then there’s no way people like Jimmy, Eater, Rick, and Audrey would have survived. According to the book, the termination protocol releases a poisonous gas inside the silo to wipe out every single living thing inside it.

Massive Book Spoilers Ahead

Well, this part is going to be purely speculative, as the makers of the Apple TV+ show have deviated a bit from Hugh Howey’s books, and I am just trying to connect the dots with the information that has been revealed in the show so far. The Algorithm’s absence in Silo 17 is most likely because of the data breach that took place several years before Jimmy’s silo was shut down. The rogue IT head of Silo 40 had hacked the master system, thereby cutting all communication and facilities between Silo 1 and the other silos in the system. In short, the Founders were no longer in control. A dozen silos went dark, and no one knew what was happening. Silo 1 tried to terminate these silos, including Silo 40, and sent the collapse codes to trigger the safeguard, but there was no way to verify their fate. The camera feeds and comms had been cut. If you remember, in episode 5 of season 2, when Lukas accessed Salvador Quinn’s hard drive, he found some original blueprints of the silo in which he’d spotted some lines coming from outside the silo walls. One of these cables, I believe, is the comms and power cable that connects all the silos in the system. And the other one is the gas line, which is used to wipe out an entire silo.

One of the obvious reasons why the Algorithm never made any kind of contact with Jimmy or Solo was because he wasn’t verified in the database. In the same way, the Algorithm didn’t talk to George Wilkins when he found the tunnel and couldn’t open the door. A second possibility is that the Algorithm was wiped out from the Silo 17 system when someone from Silo 1 sent a collapse code soon after the uprising. In the third book, a key character had changed a few lines of code and “rigged” the system to give the next silo that the Founders would shut down a chance to survive. And call it luck or a coincidence, the next silo they tried to terminate happened to be Silo 17, because of which, instead of a poisonous gas, they got something that was going to change the game completely. You see, it was merely bad luck that the rebels of Silo 17 opened the airlock at the same time when they were going to get the greatest gift of their lives, and those who stayed behind, like Jimmy, were blessed with it. It could also be possible that Jimmy never heard the Algorithm’s voice because Silo 1 believed Silo 17 was no longer functional, and no one used the Algorithm to contact Jimmy since they didn’t know he existed.

But you see, in the show, it isn’t just about the “voice.” There are other ways of interacting with the Algorithm. We have already seen an AI-powered tablet in Silo 18 that Lukas used to read the Legacy books. Then again, I am assuming even if such a tablet exists in the vault, Solo cannot access it because, once again, he isn’t authorized to do so. Everything Jimmy knows about the world before humans were locked inside the silos, he had learned from the hard copies of the books and relics kept inside the vault, which underlines the fact that he isn’t aware of the Algorithm’s presence. I believe the later seasons of Silo will address the absence of the Algorithm in Silo 17 in more detail than I can.