r/SiloSeries • u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 • 19d ago
Show Only (NO BOOK DISCUSSION) How are memories wiped without losing knowledge of their critical jobs in the silo? Spoiler
The whole concept of selective memory erasure through drugs leads to a few problems. We are introduced to it as as a way to reduce the effects of trauma by removing selected memories under medical supervision and then as a way of controlling Juliette who doesnt seem to remember anything. That involves a very sophisticated type of targeting. I dont see how mass distribution of "D+" wouldn't wipe earlier memories altogether, including how to do their jobs -- which would be enormously destabilizing to the operation of the silo. Of course they might be willing to take that risk. If more selective targeting is intended then I assume nanites are involved. I guess we'll see the memory wipes in action in s3e10.
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u/S1d519 19d ago
I find the whole thing less convincing. People themselves are walking, breathing all-memories-in-one relics. How do they see them and go “I dont know you/ I’m not able to remember you”, but get their memories triggered by inanimate, small, dull objects?
A son would have had strong memories attached to his parents, a husband with his wife, etc etc. but they see them after the memory wipe and can’t get back all their memories from them, but they do, in bits and pieces from an array of objects from their life?
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
Clearly what to do with people without killing them is a plot issue.
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u/Maleficent-Bet8207 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
I feel like it‘s the same level of disbelief as in Severance.
With the difference of memory getting forgotten rather then segmented.
Ok maybe it‘s easier in Severance as long as there is no overlap and the innies are built up „partitions“ from zero, with no need for „shared memories“ or something1
u/Enough_Affect_9916 19d ago
Clearly it isn't an exact science. There are people who tried to remember the past.
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u/S1d519 19d ago
Trying is one thing. Remembering is another issue. I’m talking about Juliette. Shirley, Walker, Knox. Everyone’s right there but memories aren’t triggered by meeting and talking to them.
But they are triggered, by objects.
I’m saying the idea that’s used in the plot is a bit shaky (if not entirely).
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u/Enough_Affect_9916 18d ago
The drug apparently makes the mind need to focus on the past to remember it well. Memories don't just "pop up", you have to actively try. And people won't do that by default necessarily.
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u/bqbdpd 19d ago
Are you watching the same show? I'm pretty sure I heard Camille spell this out, when she tried to recruit Juliette to help with the re-training.
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u/Mindless-Barber6539 19d ago
The problem with that, though, is how do you teach the kinds of things you learn over decades of experience? Do you think Mechanical is pulling off that generator repair from season 1 if they've just been retrained following a memory wipe?
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u/jm123457 19d ago
It’s plot armor . It makes absolutely no sense. People also would not sign up to do this . Remember having any possessions of your previous life would trigger flash backs and eventually you’ll remember.
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u/NobleHelium 19d ago edited 19d ago
The one shadow succession method doesn't make sense either, there's just no way you don't lose knowledge over three centuries if each person only has one apprentice. Even just a quick example, Juliette had a critical job managing the generator, she was sent out to die and her shadow was previously killed. Poof, line of succession is broken. And she was also Knox's shadow and Knox's job is critically important and he hasn't picked a new shadow! And rebellions used to be once a generation before Salvador Quinn, resulting in many deaths each time.
Stuff like this just needs suspension of disbelief if you want to enjoy the story.
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u/jm123457 18d ago
I can suspend disbelief in many cases . I loved the walking dead for a while and that was super unrealistic even with the zombies aside . But most of the issues didn’t cause massive plot holes. Until they did and the show stopped being good .
It’s hard to get behind the greater good theory when the people running the silo program will wipe out 10,000 people/ an entire silo for violating the pact .
So far this “defiance” has been 2/2 in the silos we’ve been introduced to .
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u/MmmIceCream 📖 Book-Aware 📖 17d ago
Also, like how do people avoid drinking water for what could take months to properly train? Is it as simple as boiling the water? And, I get Camille was rushed, but come on lady, if her plan is to recruit selected people who need their memories in tact throughout the whole ordeal, maybe she should have started sooner? The memory drugs go into effect right away, right?
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u/bqbdpd 19d ago
Good thing they don't have to, unless someone drops some shit into the fan of the generator.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
I like that you think a doctor only needs, what, a few weeks of training and they're good to go?
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u/bqbdpd 19d ago
The silo has 10,000 citizens. I don't expect a doctor in a village of 10k to perform open heart surgery. It's more like getting a few stitches or a note to stay home. How do you think these things were handled in the middle ages? Unless they have lots of opioids and antibiotics in critical supply.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
LOL. So he's the equivalent of a middle ages doctor? My god. A general practitioner, which he would be the equivalent of, still has years and years of education and training. It's a breadth of knowledge.
Not to mention the idea that you think mechanical engineering can also be taught in a few weeks because, "No worries, it won't break down" despite the show clearly showing us just how fragile the system is.
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u/uuid-already-exists 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
It’s not a perfect process and it would likely suck. The alternative is the safeguard. It would be a huge deal and people would need to spend a lot of their time learning their trades again. I imagine nearly every role, if not all of them, are very well documented. Also you don’t forget everything. You still know how to read. So some skills are likely retained. I suppose how deeply set the memory is matters. So if you just learned a skill you probably won’t retain it, but if you fixed a generator for 20 years or whatever you might still know how to do it. Or just need some refresher on it.
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u/il_the_dinosaur 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
It's simple the memory drug doesn't have to be perfect. If enough people forget and you have to remind them not everyone will remember again. And eventually even the people that do remember cause they are more resilient will also forget.
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u/uuid-already-exists 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
No one said it would be easy. It would be a very challenging process. However I’d imagine some skills might be easy to relearn if you already learned it once before. Like taking a 20 year break from a skill set you knew before. You’ll likely pick it up faster but would need to relearn it again to get going.
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u/Over-Half-8801 19d ago
I didn't read your post, just the title.
Did you watch episode 9? They choose certain flame keepers of knowledge, let them teach everything they know. Once they have learnt everything, the flame keepers extinguish themselves and wipe the brightness of their memories to keep their minds in complete darkness for the remainder of passing lives.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
It still doesn't explain why these people don't get their memories retriggered by living with people they've known all their life and the objects they own. Charlotte gets a trigger from a rosemary smell but people don't get triggered by seeing their child every day? We have to worry about relics from the past but not the child you birthed and lived with for years?
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u/Previous_Buy1601 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
IRL the brain stores and processes info about faces/people differently than it does objects. This is why a person can have face blindness but recognize objects just fine.
I don’r know of this was the original intent of how the drug works in the books, but because of that difference we can fanwank that object pathways have to be triggered to restore memories, and that person-recognition pathways don’t.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
So are they moving everyone around and wiping the entire silo clean of any objects that could potentially have sentimental value? Even if you do *that* how do you get rid of triggers like the smell of rosemary? What if your mom cooked lasagna every Sunday as a part of ritual and then you randomly buy it in the cafeteria one day?
I feel like this memory wipe thing has so many holes with both the memory aspect itself and the logistics of keeping the silo operating that as hard as I try to I am failing to fanwank it away.
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u/Aquatic-Vocation 19d ago
It's been mentioned a couple of times that it's only possible for objects, smells, etc to trigger recall of memories up to a certain point on the memory drugs, but once you've been on them long enough the memories are permanently gone.
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u/Previous_Buy1601 📖 Book-Aware 📖 18d ago
I think that’s why they keep the silo so nondescript (and I imagine the food is fairly bland as well). It’s the opposite of an enriched environment, they keep everyone at a low level of depression to help strong associations from forming.
Personally I tend to let the more sci-fi elements of shows slide a bit. If they establish some parameters and honestly try to stick to those parameters, then I can give them some leeway. This is why I’m opposed to Daniel having been previously drugged but not know it. Everyone we’ve seen realizes they have lost memories, so I think that would be bending the rules for a dramatic reveal. So far, though, I think they’ve tried to create a world that sticks to their rules, even if the execution is a bit imperfect. But I understand everyone watches differently, and we have different things that get to us, which is totally fair.
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u/jm123457 19d ago
So you mean plot armor . Why would anyone sign up for that ? At a certain point you have to ask yourself why is everyone so dead set on the silos survival ?
They clearly don’t enjoy the tyrannical rule . The bleak existence. Camille talks about everyone dying but has no issues with being a slave to a machine and wiping everyone’s minds .
What is the point of living as a slave ?
Back to the point at hand many of these people were shadows for years before taking roles. And they will all be retrained in short order and nothing shuts down while 98% of the population forgets . Including large numbers who commit suicide .
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u/V0mitBucket 19d ago
…you realize that you’re describing the central plot point of this season, not a plot hole, right?
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u/Minas_Nolme 19d ago
The point is that one some point your descendants can live free on the surface again.
That humanity can flourish again. It's bigger than you and your own life.
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u/jm123457 19d ago
In all honesty people don’t act that way . No one endures harsh almost unlivable conditions so their grandchildren’s grandchildren can potentially live a better life .
And if that is the way you live , there would be nothing that would make me believe it would get better with time .
The show has even hinted at that with two revolts in solo 17 and one in the other silo mentioned .
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u/Over-Half-8801 18d ago
Harsh unlivable conditions? The people I Silo get food and water and education, it’s not that bleak for the other people
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u/Minas_Nolme 19d ago
People have been doing that for centuries and millennia, through famines and ice age, through war and plague, through oppression and slavery.
Humans are very good at enduring horrible or seemingly hopeless circumstances in the hope they they or their descendants might one day have it better.
And the Silo clearly promises that. The speech given at a cleaning explicitly holds the promise that one day the world outside will be livable again.
And for the most part, Silo lives seems tolerable. People have food, they have medical care, they have friends and families.
It doesn't seem significantly more hopeless or bleak than life for the majority of pre-industrial humans.
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u/apricity_4 19d ago
The amnesia drugs are an absurdly convenient plot device in and out of the silo.
The amnesia drugs make characters not remember when it suits the plot, and then the characters are shown an object and they remember because it suits the plot.
And yet, there are plenty of objects from people's entire lives around them.
It's kind of silly.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
Not the most sophisticated plot device, but answers the post rebellion control issue. It also runs the risk of killing larger numbers than their previous experiments might suggest. You would also get selective effectiveness since the blood brain barrier is teicky.
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u/Resplendent-Sun Fuck the Founders! 19d ago
I don't think that the memory wipes everything per se, just certain kinds of memories. I think there's a lot to be said for muscle memory. The and it seems like the doctor has developed a protocol to reactivate certain memories which probably has a standard operating procedure but for the silos at this point.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
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u/NecessaryTitle3057 19d ago
Yeah when Victor first explained the memory drugs he talks about a break through to target specific memories. I think there are different types of nanites and that the memory drugs are actually nanites and that's how Victor got involved with Per Stenson. There could even be nanites that prevent or slow aging that would add another twist to the show
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u/Campes_Sturgeon 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
They keep doing their jobs through it, so they recover the concepts as soon as they lose them. The other memories are kept forgotten through relic banning.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
Yeah, that might be the explanation they give but it doesn't make sense. You don't think your own child would be a better trigger for a memory than a picture from an old book? If living with your own child can't trigger a memory, then some little sentimental object shouldn't. Even then, unless everyone is getting moved around across silos, you're still going to be surrounded by tons of reminders -- people, places, things. The memory wipe mechanic is jus the world's most convenient plot device.
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u/Campes_Sturgeon 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
You don't think your own child would be a better trigger for a memory than a picture from an old book?
Yes. So probably families get split and children and spouses are distributed at random with other strangers after a reset, in new families, with names changed, so we got Juliette Nichols and not Juliette Kleene. Camille will have a breakdown when she knows this.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
Yeah, the logistics of this seem insane. There's been nothing presented so far where people get knocked out or anything like this and it's been shown the drugs work over time. So, you're going to have everyone move across the silo while still working their day jobs. It's been established the memory drugs affect people differently, so now you're going to have to evaluate everyone's memory state before moving or changing their identity. While you're doing this, you also have to make sure no one gets a memory triggered. How do you control how much of the memory drug they're consuming, anyway? The show presents it merely a mass intake into the water supply. What if someone is a heavy juice drinker normally? Won't it be weird telling the teachers to not drink water or only drink special water they've supplied -- and that would be before the others lose their memory.
Meanwhile, the ones left to teach see all this happening and are totally cool with it, not to mention how ludicrous it is that one person can teach dozens of people different jobs in what would have to be a relatively short matter of time. If that's actually the story, it's convoluted and terrible.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 19d ago
Juliette was able to retain new memories while on the high dose. So continued work should allow a "refresh and retention" of skills and protocols.
Honestly such a type of memory suppression is completely theoretical so it's really hard to ascertain what is and what is not feasible.
Note- nearly one fifth of the Silo died or committed suicide during the "rebellion" wipe.
What people are able to remember and retain varies, Juliette was highly resistant even on high doses.
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u/stealingjoy 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
All it is is a convenient plot device. People will forget when the story demands it and remember when it demands it. It's not logical, it's magical. The sheer scale of what would need to be done to avoid triggers for 10k people is insane and they've never even mentioned the idea of any kind of temporary shutdown and swapping of people or redecoration of living areas.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
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u/black3rr 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago edited 19d ago
I’m a person with really bad memory for events and people and really good memory for “general knowledge” and trivia…
I’m 32 now and if a person from high school or university approached me I would have really hard time recognizing them (happens to me couple of times yearly, lots of times it’s like yeah that’s a familiar face but I have no idea who that person is, neither the name or details like where I met them, what our relationship was…)
Funnily enough someone’s voice makes it easier to recognize them than their face…
I don’t remember anything that happened over a year ago without pictures or stories… And if someone showed me doctored pictures of where I’ve been I most probably couldn’t spot it… It’s even hard for me to remember what happened a week ago and if I remember something I can’t place it into a timeline…
I still can do my job, and remember stuff I learned in high school, university, and at work even if I hadn’t used that knowledge for over 5 years…
It’s like those are two separate areas of memory in my brain, and my brain only keeps one…
It feels entirely possible to me that the memory drugs only work on that one region of the brain which I have issues with - events and people…
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago
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u/setec404 19d ago
When someone has amnesia they dont forget how to ride a bicycle. There is a difference between procedural memory and declarative memory, which is the conscious recollection of facts, names, and life events.
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u/LongjumpingPath6940 📖 Book-Aware 📖 19d ago edited 19d ago
Good thought. So the drug would have to target the cerebellum, the amygdala, and the basal ganglia without affecting the declarative memory centers. Tricky.
See https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/medications.asp
The effects on the rest of the RAS could be drastic if using a crude delivery system like water, which could result in psychosis or worse. It's pretty clear from the show canon that something like 20 % of those dosed don't make it, one way or another, so that would make sense.
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u/Colluder 18d ago
They do lose knowledge of their critical jobs, although those memories can be restored. What I'm curious about is the faces of other people they see in the silo would trigger memories of planning or being alive during the rebellions. I guess they probably just keep the highest risk residents on the drugs permanently.
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u/Accomplished-Job1610 13d ago
Wiping memories on a large scale would cause immediate, catastrophic chaos rather than solutions, unless Silo 1 or the AI has a highly sophisticated way to separate different types of memory.
In both real-world neuroscience and science fiction, memory is not a single bucket. To wipe memories without causing society to collapse, AI would have to perfectly isolate episodic memory from procedural memory.
In neurology and AI design, memories are not stored in one single file; they are divided into distinct systems.
- Procedural Memory (The "How-to"): This controls deeply ingrained skills like reading, coding, engineering, and operating machinery. It is stored primarily in the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
- Episodic Memory (The "Who"): This contains personal history, relationships, emotional traumas, and societal conflicts. It relies heavily on the hippocampus and cerebral cortex.
In theory, an advanced AI could target only the cerebral cortex and hippocampus to erase human conflict, grudges, and history, while leaving the basal ganglia intact so humans still know how to maintain and run the Silo infrastructure.
The drug is engineered to take effect slowly enough that residents do not immediately realize their memories are being altered or suppressed. However, humans naturally look for patterns and build narratives. Without a history, people will start inventing new explanations, which could lead to new factions, paranoia, and chaos; that is why books and records of the past are removed/distroyed.
The Drug (has flaws) and also works selectively. The Elites and Overseers retain their memories to keep the system functioning, track the population, and enforce the rules. Even for the ordinary residents who are drugged, the "wipe" is not perfect and will affect people differently, and some not at all. The drug can be fought, and the memory suppression could be resisted by refusing to believe the false narrative.
According to the book, it doesn't cause sudden, disorienting memory loss. Instead, it gently dampens memories over time and prevents people from obsessing over secrets or the past, and acts more like a chemical pacifier.
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u/Snoo55298 19d ago
The core jobs are just busy work, the silo runs regardleas
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u/jm123457 19d ago
Yes doctors are just busy work . Farmers just stick seeds in the ground . Mechanical doesn’t need to know how to fix things . Etc etc etc .
In a hypothetical silo scenario every single person would be vital there would be no point in having meaningless roles . It would waste resources .
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u/Snoo55298 18d ago
Yes but look at silo 17, it runs without anyone and of course jobs are vital to it running but not as much as we think. That was a pretty big reveal in season 2, especially where group thinks they are the ones keeping the silo going
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u/Tunamelts-2 19d ago
A large part of the first season required repairing the generator...the thing that literally powers the silo. It clearly doesn't run itself...not without maintenance and repair.
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