Silo: A Complete Timeline Guide – When Exactly the Apple TV+ Show Happens and What It Means

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Silo season 2.

Apple TV+’s Silo has kept many elements of its timeline a mystery, but its second season drops enough clues to help viewers piece together a calendar of key events. Primarily based on Hugh Howey’s first Silo book, Wool, Silo‘s seasons 1 and 2 intentionally avoid revealing too much about the outside world and what happened to it before humans were forced to live inside the central silos. Season 2 deepens the overarching lore by exploring the history of another neighboring silo while adding a few new characters to the mix.

While this exploration adds many new layers to the show’s narrative, it makes its timeline even more confusing. Although Silo season 2 does an incredible job of getting viewers more invested in its storytelling, it avoids giving away any explicit details about the year it is set in. Owing to this, it is hard not to focus on several little developments throughout the Apple TV+ sci-fi show‘s first two seasons and deduce when exactly its events take place.

Solo’s Timeline Reveals When Silo 17’s Rebellion Took Place

He Was In His Vault For Decades

Almost throughout its runtime, Silo season 2 maintains an air of ambiguity surrounding Solo’s timeline and backstory. Every time Juliette attempts to dig into Solo’s past, the Steve Zahn character either changes the topic or tries to distract her. However, towards the end of Silo season 2, Juliette finally connects the dots and realizes that Solo was barely 11 or 12 years old when Silo 17’s rebellion took place. She recalls him reminiscing about sitting beside a girl in a Level B classroom and finds his name, Jimmy Conroy, written on a bench.

The fact that Solo was barely a teenager when the rebellion ensued confirms that a little over three decades have passed in the show’s timeline since Silo 17’s citizens stepped out. In appearance, Solo easily looks like he is above 40, suggesting he has spent more than 30 years in the vault. The fact that Silo 17’s teenage characters like Hope, Rick, and Audrey were not even born when the rebellion happened and even their parents were children during its events confirms it happened over 3 decades before the show’s present timeline.

Bernard Has Confirmed When The Silos Were Built

It Has Been Centuries Since They Were Built

Moments after Bernard gives Lukas access to the vault in Silo season 2, he reveals that the information database in the secret room only provides limited information on the silos. The Head of IT also confirms the Silos were built 352 years before the present timeline. This highlights how many generations of humans have lived in the silos, and the world has remained seemingly unoccupied by humans for at least three centuries. Given how seasons 1 and 2 imply that humans can still not step out without sealed suits, it is hard not to wonder what might have happened to the outside world to make it uninhabitable for so long.

Silo 18’s Last Rebellion’s Salvador Quinn Connection Confirms Its Timeline

Provisions Were Made To Ensure No One Remembered The Rebellion

Silo season 2 also confirms that Salvador Quinn was the underground structure’s mayor 140 years before the present timeline. Since the last rebellion in Silo 18 happened during Quinn’s rule, and he took extreme provisions, like wiping everyone’s memories and burning evidence of the before-times, it would be logical to say that Silo 18 did not experience any major uprisings for almost 140 years after Quinn’s rule. Given how the silos were created 352 years before the present events, Quinn became Silo 18’s leading figure roughly 200 years after they were built.

As the show confirms, almost every generation before Quinn’s rule started a rebellion in Silo 18. However, to break the cycle and prevent history from repeating, Quinn not only destroyed all evidence of the existence of previous rebellions but also gradually made Silo 18’s people forget about their past by adding a memory-erasing drug to the water supply. This would explain why people from the silo barely know anything about what happened before the last rebellion.

One Silo Season 2 Clue Gives Away The Year Of The Present Timeline

The Clue Suggests The Show Changes The Books’ Timeline

Moments before Meadows dies in Silo season 2, she asks Bernard if she can go outside and experience freedom for a few fleeting moments. Although Bernard is forced to deny her request, he shows her the outside world through a VR headset. Interestingly, as Bernard guides her through her VR experience, the subtitles mention him saying, “Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, 2018.” This little detail seemingly confirms that the world was far from being a wasteland in 2018, and the apocalypse was yet to happen.

Although the actual timeline of the world-ending event remains unknown, it would be fair to assume that the construction of the show’s silos was in tandem with the real world’s present year. If the world was doing fine in 2018, the silos were likely built somewhere in the 2020s. Given how 352 years have passed since the construction of the silos in the show, the present year in the series should easily be beyond 2370. This makes Apple TV+’s Silo significantly different from Hugh Howey’s books. In the source material, the silos’ construction gets completed in 2052 while the present timeline unfolds in 2345.

The Timeline Of Silo Season 2’s Ending Flashback Explained

The Flashback Unfolds In The “Before Times”

Silo season 2 ends with an intriguing flashback that features an interaction between a Congressman and a journalist named Helen. Although the timeline of this flashback remains unknown, its visuals suggest it aligns with the real world, possibly unfolding somewhere in the 2020s. Considering how Bernard confirms the silos were built 352 years before the show’s present timeline, the flashback seemingly happens over 352 years before Bernard’s rule in Silo 18.

Interestingly, the Congressman gifts the same duck Pez dispenser to Helen that Juliette later acquires from George Wilkins in Silo season 1. This could mean that Helen eventually became one of the first-generation residents of Silo 18 and passed down the dispenser as a symbol of hope and rebellion against the silos’ oppressive system. She could be one of the first few Flamekeepers of Silo 18, and, as the Silo season 2 flashback suggests, she might have also been Wilkins’ ancestor.