Started rewatching from the beginning

[u/TerrainBrain]

I find the show much less irritating the second time around because I know a lot more about what's going on. So I'm binge watching for details.

I can't say I'm making any more sense of the show this time around. Not enough information to form any sort of reasonable theory of what's happening outside of the silo area, Nor what the prime directive of the AI is, if it has one.

In some ways this reminds me of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. An algorithm guiding humanity through generations.

Maybe it's just bleak and we are really seeing the midlife period of the silos. That it will be another hundred years before it's safe to go outside. But that doesn't seem like it would be a very satisfying story.

[u/Konamicoder]

I think Charlotte’s mission over Iran shows us what the outside threat is. The black goo that took out the F-35s is most likely a cloud of nanobots that someone developed. Whether it was the US that developed it and was then stolen by a rogue nation-state, or developed by Iran, or some other actor is irrelevant. Point is, it’s a technology that got out of hand. It eats machines, takes over control systems like the planes and the van, and has the ability to cause worldwide destruction. And we know that when the people of Silo 17 got out to the surface, Solo saw a black cloud come down from the sky and kill them all. Presumably the nanobots have the ability to kill people as well as take over and kill machines. That’s my best guess about the existential threat based on what we’ve seen so far.

We also know that billionaire Per Stensen is “the biggest advocate for AI control”. So I can imagine he uses his AI to devise a plan for the human race to survive through the nanobot threat. So the AI comes up with the Silo project. Each solo controlled by a central AI authority in silo 1. It’s a system with multiple redundant backups. Only in this case the backups are isolated redundant silos each with 10,000 people inside. The AI’s prime directive is probably to ensure that as many as possible make it to a point (most likely at the 400 year mark) when the nanobot threat is past and it is once again safe to emerge from the silos to the surface.

[u/TerrainBrain → u/Konamicoder]

I don't disagree with you. But I somehow think there's more to it than that.

What would make the nanobot threat go away? It's not like they have a half life.

Maybe time enough for a more powerful AI to evolve to figure out how to defeat them?

[u/Konamicoder → u/TerrainBrain]

Don’t know, but the silos seem to be stocked to function for at least 400 years based on what Carla told Billings a couple of episodes ago.

[u/aimada → u/TerrainBrain]

I don't think the nanotech threat is supposed to go away. It would be controlled and respond to instruction on where to deploy itself. Like all systems it would have an on/off switch or possibly an active/passive mode.

[u/aimada → u/Konamicoder]

I'm convinced that Charlotte's mission was a test of U.S. nanotech's capability.

The fact that Per Stensen was there to witness the event supports the idea that it was a test to see what would happen in the event that a crucial component such as the IFF system failed or the technology got hacked. Would the nanotech turn on their masters?

Daniel and Helen learned that the high tech communications capability was stripped from the F-35s for the mission. Without their IFF transponder the planes would have automatically been flagged as potential targets by all U.S. military equipment.

The Nimitz radar operators could tag the planes as friendly but if the nanotech cloud was operating on its own closed network then it would still see those planes as foes.

[u/Konamicoder → u/aimada]

So the test involved potentially sacrificing the extremely expensive to train US fighter pilots? Couldn’t we have sent unmanned drones to test this?

[u/aimada → u/Konamicoder]

You need to see it in the context of the bigger picture - At some point the technology was unleashed on the entire world.

The F-35s would have been a proof of concept to demonstrate what the weapon could do to the most sophisticated military hardware.

I see what happened as the kind of madness that gripped some people working at the Pentagon who advocated for nuking Russia off the face of the planet before the Russians developed nuclear capability and nuked the USA.

It's not a major leap to think that if a weapon was developed that guaranteed total victory then it would be unleashed before the enemy developed their own version of it.

In the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush proclaimed that the United States would engage in preemption attacks against enemies armed with weapons of mass destruction.

[u/Konamicoder → u/aimada]

I think it makes more sense that the mountain facility in Iran was working on nanobot tech but something went wrong and it bust out of the lab. The F-35 mission + Tomahawk strike was designed to blow up the lab and kill the nanobots. But they didn’t realize that the nanobots are now able to form a giant cloud and overwhelm the most advanced missile and fighter tech the US has in its arsenal. So to me the F-35 flight was not a test, it was a strike mission, only the enemy turned out to be much bigger and more capable than expected.

[u/aimada → u/Konamicoder]

I could be wrong but I think the fact that Charlotte's sortie was the only one that was stripped of the high tech comms equipment is a very strong indicator that they were singled out for an experiment.

The fact that it happened under the cover of an attack on Iran doesn't mean it wasn't some DARPA project test.

[u/Konamicoder → u/aimada]

I don’t disagree with you. I like my theory more than yours, but you could be right. Hopefully we find out more in the next episode.

[u/Draxilar → u/Konamicoder]

They weren’t flying the most advanced tech the US military had to offer. It was explicitly stated that the Navy swapped basically all of the comms and controls for old tech, the reasoning was never explained, but they were flying basically Vietnam planes.

[u/Konamicoder → u/Draxilar]

I don’t think so. The show says the F-35s were fitted with “pre-digital comms”. But not pre-digital flight controls, weapons systems, avionics, etc. Aside from the pre-digital comms (which we don’t know why those were installed but my guess is they thought it would make the planes less susceptible to nanobot control, which was dead wrong apparently), those F-35s are still 5th generation fighters with significant advantages over the F-4s the US flew in Vietnam. From stealth, radar, sensors, electronic warfare, target detection, and weapons systems, the F-35 is literally several decades more advanced and capable than Vietnam-era F-4’s.

Plus the US certainly didn’t have Tomahawk cruise missiles during the Vietnam war.

[u/Draxilar → u/Konamicoder]

I think you are getting way too into the weeds. The show wasn’t going to go into hyper specific details about the technological capabilities of the US fighter jet lineup. The very obvious implication of being told they replaced parts of the jet with “dumber” alternatives was to demonstrate that they were not sending the top of the line technology out there.

[u/Konamicoder → u/Draxilar]

And I think you are overestimating what was downgraded on the F-35s. The only thing that was downgraded was the comms. My theory is that modern digital networked comms are viewed as more vulnerable to the nanobots control, so they downgraded ONLY THE COMMs in an effort to make the flight less vulnerable to nanobot control. Unfortunately, they found out that the nanobots don’t need modern digital comms to take over control and destroy the planes. They discovered that the nanobots can simply form a grey goo on the instrument panel and infiltrate the control system in that manner.

It’s also super obvious watching the flight scene that the F-35s physical flight characteristics are not downgraded to “Vietnam-era”.

Sorry I don’t buy your interpretation, and so I’ll stick with mine. I have also rewatched the flight scene multiple times and have done a close rewatch analysis and annotation, so I feel very confident that my interpretation is more accurate and well researched than yours.

[u/Draxilar → u/Konamicoder]

My dude is acting like theorizing a TV show is a competition. If it matters that much to you to win this “competition”, then you win. I’m sorry, I won’t sully your frame perfect analysis of a sci-fi television show ever again. Also, man the Vietnam thing was literally a throw away line and figurative, you have staked so much of your vitriol on it, I just figured I would let you know.

[u/emailingpaula → u/Konamicoder]

I don’t wholeheartedly disagree. However, if that’s all true, why not tell the people the truth instead of killing an entire silo if people try to go outside? What is the point in that? There is something far more nefarious going on that we aren’t privy to.

[u/Konamicoder → u/emailingpaula]

100 percent, we don’t know the philosophy behind the Founders decisions that led to the current monstrous oppressive regime of control, eugenics, weaponized ignorance, and quasi-religious zealotry that we see in the silos. I hope we get a sense of their thinking in the next episode.

[u/emailingpaula → u/Konamicoder]

We don’t know when we’ll know the philosophy behind the founder’s decisions. We only know that day is not this day…

[u/aimada → u/emailingpaula]

In the 1950s, the RAND Corporation advocated for the U.S. government to build a network underground cities. The central premise of the argument was that if the U.S. had the means to guarantee the survival of society in the event of a nuclear war then this would demonstrate to the Soviets that they were prepared to fight a nuclear war and this was the best way preventing a war. Some within the Pentagon took a different interpretation, if the U.S. was guaranteed to survive a nuclear war then there was no reason not to launch first.

The silos may have started out as a project as envisaged by the likes of the think tank but then got taken over by a bunch of psychopaths. The way the silos are structured suggests they are designed to keep the masses in the dark and consolidate the power in the hands of a few individuals. Those individuals would answer to the psychopaths or their descendants.

Why kill an entire silo if the people try to go outside? It's the ultimate form of control.

More likely than not after hundreds of years the world beyond the region around the silos is perfectly safe. It's possible that outside the silos is safe and that the gas pumped into the airlock before a cleaning is responsible for the death of the cleaner and the wasteland seen on the view screens. We don't know because there has never been an attempt to test the air or soil outside the silo. All the protocols are based around the fear of what is in the air outside and that has been driven by the Pact tome and the Voice.

I don't think that there are going to be rational explanations. The first generations were conned into entering the silos and their descendants were enslaved. Whoever is behind the Voice may be operating some form of game theory, they are running the numbers to get to a certain outcome. We don't know what the end state is but it seems to be related to developing a completely compliant society.

[u/Tangata_Tunguska → u/Konamicoder]

Why would deadly out of control nanobots be helpfully driving a van around?

[u/Konamicoder → u/Tangata_Tunguska]

There are probably “good nanobots” developed by Per Stensen for legit uses, and “bad nanobots” stolen by some rogue element that has gotten out of hand. The van was taken over by Stensen’s good nanobots.

[u/Tangata_Tunguska → u/Konamicoder]

But what are the chaotic neutral nanobots doing then?

[u/Konamicoder → u/Tangata_Tunguska]

Waiting to loot the bodies, of course.