The Sword and Laser discussion

As threatened, I would like to discuss one of the book club questions proposed by Howey.

So remember the scenario. The outside world is deadly. There is clear precedene that if people are aware of the actual situation (we are not the only silo, we could manufacture suits to go outside and have contact, etc.) there will be uprisings that can lead to the downfall of the whole Silo.

You have a set of rules describing how to keep people stupid and how to kill uprisings before they start.

What would you do?

To start, I would say that I would surely not make the knowledge available to everybody all at once. I would try to find some trustworthy people with whom to share the truth, first to have backups in case I die, second to have more of a brainpool to come up with better solutions.

Second, I would get rid of the stupid "you can't talk about wanting outside" rule, but make it clear to anyone that there is absolutely no use in getting outside. There is nothing to gain from it and it is a useless waste of ressources.

Third, make email accessible to annyone - and I have control over it with my department. Much, much easier to find out conspiracies like that, instead of having everybody using paper communications I can't trail.

So, what would be your ideas?

I'd cry like a baby and hide down in the secret room.

I'd start by having more people go outside. It' simple psychology - the more you deny people something, the more they want it. If anyone can grab a suit and go out, pretty soon no one will want to.

Basing a whole society on a deception though? It just becomes a spiralling mess of cover-ups, lies, cover-ups of cover-ups and paranoia. You can pretend people are stupid, you can tell people they are stupid, but that doesn't make them stupid.

Would you let them go otuside in the faulty suits? Or actual working suits, thus risking them discovering other silos?

I think in our current state of the world, you are completely right. But we have to face the frightening reality of this setup - there is actual proof that letting people know the truth can be deadly to the society as a whole. There are some things you keep secret from the wider populace because frankly, they wouldn't understand the necessitiy.

Just look at what happened when a part of the truth came to light - there was an actual war that put the whole silo at risk.

And it was lead by some of the smartest people in the silo, the heads of supply and mechanical. But even their initial decision was to go to war, instead of raising a discussion, trying to make the population aware. The VERY FIRST THING they did was create guns and bombs.

So in this scenario, I am very unsure about what is the right decision. It sure isn't killing everybody that raises questions, but is telling the whole truth to everybody?

I'd let the people know the basic facts: the outside will kill you, there are other silos (I'd find that comforting - you're not alone. There are other people survivng like you are), and why you're all living there (what Solo said about storing grain and how it's there to plant when things aren't so bad). It's no guarantee it would work but I'd hope that if the people knew the most important truths that uprisings wouldn't happen. Give them a positive outlook - their grandkids or great-grandkids might be able to leave some day - and they would be content.

I'd also do what Tim said. Let people out and less people will want to go out.

the whole thing reminds me of the ending of Fallout 1

But seriously, if I was in charge of a silo and I had the knowledge and technology, I would select a trusted group of people to explore, study and scavange the outside. Once the first expeditions would be successfull, I'd inform the rest of the people and organise periodic, rotatory outside missions for everyone. This way everyone would have a chance to go outside and see for themslves

Nekroskop wrote: "Just look at what happened when a part of the truth came to light - there was an actual war that put the whole silo at risk. "

It wasn't really the truth that there were other silos that led to the uprising it was more the fact that IT had been willfully murdering people and lying to them that sparked it. If there were no secrets there would be no need to kill people to stop them being uncovered and no reason for rebellions when this was discovered.

Holsten and his wife seemed to be driven to wanting to go out when they suspected they were being lied to about the condition of the outside world. Without them half uncovering the truth and jumping to the wrong conclusion they might have just been able to accept that the world was gone and the silo was all they had.

People that went truly stir crazy from being locked up all of the time to the point that they became dangerous could still be exiled to walk the wasteland if they wanted to get out. However with a couple of fully functional suits you could send someone out to see how crap the world is, wipe off the lenses and come back inside every couple of weeks. Could even rota it so everyone gets to see how bad it is at least once and knows that there is nothing good outside.

Dara wrote: "I'd let the people know the basic facts: the outside will kill you, there are other silos (I'd find that comforting - you're not alone."

I'm with you on that one. Let them know. Let them get updates on the radio from other people like them in the same situation. Let them bond. Hell with the proper suits you could have people move around between silos so they all actually feel in it together.

One of the reasons for the silos in the first place is so that when the world is habitable again people will come out and there will be one unified people to rebuild. I don't see how that would happen without them knowing about each other before hand. Surely with the setup you have now you would just end up with essentially a lot of different tribes of people all of which think they are all there is.

A lot of these suggestions are quite valid. I am sure they account for many of the big red X's that mark off the dead silos on the map.

Without giving a spoiler away for Hugh Howey's Shift books... there is a system in place that would curtail exploration outside (even with perfect suits).

But that's all beside the point of the author's proposed question. I am with Jules, I would blow the lid off the secrecy. I would sink the best minds into researching an anti-nano that could combat the deadly unstitcher nano's outside (a man-made antivirus if you will)

I would dig tunnels to neighboring silos, creating a network of communication and travel. I would collect all the knowledge that was in danger of being lost, those word of mouth stories passed down through generations of family--that's the biggest crime perpetrated on the inhabitants of the silos--the erasure of their past.

Thomas the middle of your post really should be marked as spoilers. I know know several things about the next books that i would rather have learned by reading them.

We know that they are mining for oil and minerals in the silo, so it seems reasonable that they have the tech to dig pretty good tunnels and could easily make a network of tunnel links between silos, especially if they are only a short distance apart.

But we have to face the frightening reality of this setup - there is actual proof that letting people know the truth can be deadly to the society as a whole.

This premise is accepted as given but it's really just a background construction of Howey's. You can find this convincing or not, but it skews the entire discussion. In the world of the book this is true... but would it be true in general? This is important because you're asking (or seem to be asking), "given a silo society, how would you run it?" which is a very different and more open ended question than "If you ran a silo in the world of Wool, how would you run it?"

PS: Also, use spoiler tags people. Really.

Ah, as we are discussing based on the Book questions, I wanted to Take the Situation from the World of wool. We are basically in Bernards role, who has eben told that Knowledge of the Outside has led to uprisings.

That makes ist a Bit more difficult to decide which Way is best. I still See the good arguments Heer and These are realy the netter approach, but I like to Play a Bit of devils advocate, as I think Bernards Motives are Quote understandable if you Out yourself in his Shoes.

Sorry for the weird capitalization, ipads are strange like that.

I don't actually think that Bernard had many options. It didn't seem to me that he had all that much control or choice. (view spoiler)[ He had to report to Silo 1 when Juliette got away and had to get approval from them for putting someone else in his place. I have a feeling that if he diverged from what they expect him to do they would have a way of replacing him. (hide spoiler)] I see his problem more with the fact that he enjoyed the killings than that he did them. He was doing what he thought and was told needed to be done. Ultimately nothing is the Silo is about individual happiness or rights, it's all about saving humanity.

All of that being said, I don't think I could kill people as the head of IT, so I guess I wouldn't want the job for that reason, but I would want to know all the secrets in all of those books.