What Silo Reveals About the Price of Conformity in an Age of Isolation
by Doove71 [Loremaster Subscriber]
As a military veteran who spent time living on the remote RAF Mount Pleasant base in the Falkland Islands, I find myself reflecting on the themes of isolation, control, and the unquenchable human thirst for truth in the hit Apple TV+ series Silo, particularly after doing a re-watch in preparation for Season 2. Inspired by Hugh Howey's fantastic Wool trilogy, the show immerses viewers in the claustrophobic world of an underground society where conformity is mandatory and questioning the status quo is punishable by death.
While the dystopian scale may be amplified, the core experience that Silo depicts - the psychological pressure cooker of life in an isolated, rigidly controlled environment - is all too real. Living on a military base in the Falklands, one of Earth's most sparsely populated places, was an unforgettable experience in isolation. Particularly during the long, dark winter months, our world shrank to the network of enclosed, artificially lit walkways connecting the base's buildings. You could traverse from end to end without ever stepping outside.
That level of removal from the natural world does strange things to the mind. Cut off from external reference points, you start to lose perspective. Small irritations balloon into major dramas. The regimented military routine, punctuated by occasional emergency drills, creates a constant low-level hum of anxiety. But most disorienting is the creeping sense that your perception of reality is shaped by your physical confinement and the strictly controlled information environment. Just like Silo's inhabitants, who are fed a steady diet of propaganda and kept compliant through the threat of exile to the toxic outside world, we were subtly encouraged not to think beyond the presented reality.
This is the most insidious threat life poses in isolated, controlled communities. When four walls bind your entire world, and your information diet is restricted, it takes a profound act of will to break free from officially sanctioned reality—to rebel. Yet, we must rebel because the alternative is to surrender our agency and humanity.
I saw this play out strikingly during Christmas on the base. The festive season brought a palpable sense of "doing things outside the norms," a feeling manifested in a mass food fight in the Junior Ranks Mess. This kind of behavior was utterly unheard of in a military setting, but it spoke to the unreal, pressurized nature of being stuck on Mount Pleasant, thousands of miles from our homes and loved ones. In that moment of joyful anarchy, we were asserting our humanity against the strict confines of military life.
That's the central conflict animating Silo, as characters like Juliette, the mechanic from the depths, risk everything to challenge the lies they've been force-fed and expose the truth about their world. Watching the show, I think about the forms that rebellion against the stifling status quo can take in our own lives.
We will never find ourselves in an underground bunker or remote military base. Still, we all face pressure to conform to social, cultural, and institutional scripts - to be a “good soldier.” The lesson of Silo and my time in the Falklands is that there is a steep personal cost to swimming against that tide and prioritizing truth over conformity risks ostracization, a kind of internal exile. It's a lonely and often anxious road.
But it's also a path to liberation because in daring to question authority, we reclaim our fundamental human birthright: the freedom to think for ourselves and author our reality. This, I believe, is why stories like Silo resonate so powerfully. In an era when it's easy to slip into siloed realities bounded by algorithms and echo chambers, these tales of resistance remind us that another way is possible - that we all can be agents of change.
As we eagerly await Silo season 2, I reflect on how the show's warning applies to our increasingly polarized and atomized world. In an age of “fake news,” digital filter bubbles, and social media mob rule, the pressure to conform to orthodox narratives has never been higher. But so too is the urgency to resist those forces - to commit to pursuing truth, however uncomfortable or isolating that journey may be. Because if dystopian parables like Silo teach us anything, it's that the price of passive complicity is higher still: nothing less than the surrender of our essential humanity.
May Silo season 2 inspire us to the rebel path of bold, truth-seeking courage. Our integrity - and our future - depends on it. As the inhabitants of Silo 18 continue to unravel the mysteries and lies confining them, let us, too, find the strength to challenge the narratives that would keep us compliant and contained. In a world that often demands we stay in our lane, may we always defend our right to look up, question, and grow. That is the seed of true liberation.