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The original was posted on /r/siloseries by /u/mattgyverlee on 2023-09-12 16:40:31.
I’m doing some research (based on the Wool/Silo trilogy by u/HughHowey, not the TV show) on the scale of the silos, and I’m asking for Reddit to comment on and correct my work.
Spoiler Warning: I’m considering passages from from Wool, Shift, and Dust, but I don’t expect any major spoilers to come up beyond the end of Wool.
TL;DR:
Possibly 1.34 miles deep (not including the mines), and likely a minimum of around 200ft in diameter.
Note on Measurements and Precision:
This is all conjecture, so I’m not working the calculations to many decimal places. In fact, I’m only using 2 significant figures in my ballpark calculations and conversions. Also, the book mixes metric for long distances and inches/feet for other distances (vive l’Amerique!), so I’ll try to add both. The extra sources from Hugh tend to talk in feet as he is an American.
[Side note: I’m an American living in another mixed-up country where you find yourself buying 3 meters of 1-inch pipe.]
A further unit note from the TV side is that “feet” in the silo may actually only be 10 inches, which I think is great since all of the steps (a central element to their lives) are 10-inches tall.
Calculating Silo Depth:
We know that each silo has 140 full floors, between 8 and 10 floors in mechanical, and the mines below.
I was wondering about the depth of each floor. In Shift chapter 41, we hear that the distance between landings 116 and 117 was 50 feet (15 meters), so that can be taken as a starting point for “normal” floors.
Note: Discussions of Silo 1 in Shift chapter 19 mention 10 meters of floor between levels, but we know that Silo 1 was very different (to discuss why would get too deeply into spoilers), so I’m not using that.
In an AMA on Reddit, Hugh Howey confirmed that the floors are around 30 feet apart (12m), and the total depth of the silo is over one mile. A reader cited a value of 50 feet (15 meters) (presumably from Shift 41) including the floor between.
Realizing that Hugh probably didn’t work the same way as Edgar Allan Poe in the Pit and the Pendulum and work things out mathematically before writing, how does this work out?
A custom-built silo could have had varying floor heights depending on function. Upper floors for the higher status people could be higher (like the cafeteria in the show). Middle floors could be slightly less, but, let’s face it, this is a mass-produced government project and custom work is more expensive. The main floors are likely the same, and this will make it easier to calculate the turns and landings.
To estimate the Mechanical levels below the main staircase, I started with the passages about Jules diving into flooded mechanical. In the chapters about the dive, it is said (Wool 64) that she went down 6 levels vertically and an unspecified amount laterally to reach the sump basin, and that she had hundreds of feet of hose. A later discussion in Dust chapter 60 (avoiding spoilers) says that she went underwater between 30 and 40 meters. Based on that, those levels in mechanical could be around 7 meters tall each, which is half of the other floors. Those floors in mechanical might benefit from being shorter as pipes run along the ceiling and need to be maintained.
In conclusion, Floors 1-140 are each about 15 meters (50 feet) tall including the thickness of the floor. The Down Deep levels where the “commoners” live could have been shorter, but Shift chapter 41 says they are the same at 15 meters (50 feet). If we take the above assumptions and set mechanical levels to be 7 meters tall, the total depth of the silo would be 1.34 miles or 2.2 kilometers not including the mines.
The mines are assumed to have been untapped at the start of the silo’s use. Chapter 28 of Wool mentions drilling past 10,000 feet in Juliette’s time, but I’m unsure whether this means from the surface (likely) or from the top of the mine (unlikely).
The Staircase:
In the book, the staircase is noted by Jimmy to be just wide enough for 2 people to pass comfortably (but 4 people were jammed together). This means that the staircase in the book would likely be 2 meters or less in width, which is significantly narrower than the grand staircase in the show.
The staircase is described as being tightly wound with multiple turns between levels and a small space large enough for a foot between the pole and treads. Jimmy mentions falling from 2 turns before a level, so the number of turns is greater than 2 turns per floor. Too many turns would result in the user hitting their head, so the turns should be greater than 7 feet below the other. The number of turns is related to the angle of each step, and I haven’t attempted to figure out what is the widest angle than can comfortably be stepped on the wider outside. With a steep staircase similar to a lighthouse, there could be as few as 10 steps per turn and a maximum of 7 turns per floor. So, the minimum of turns per floor is 3 and the maximum is 7. More turns would make it easier to descend without falling to your doom.
Based on the above depth calculations and an early mention of 10-inch steps, the grand staircase from the Cafeteria to the entrance of Mechanical on 140 (7000 ft) could feasibly be 8400 10” steps over between 420 and 840 turns.
Silo Diameter and Area:
We have the number of floors, but how big in diameter does the Silo need to be to house 10,000 people sustainably?
Deciding on the diameter of the Silo is much more difficult and I didn’t have much to go on. We know that there is an open space between the stairs and railings similar to the show, so much of this open space must be unusable.
As a starting figure, Jerry Yeti drafted some plans that were appreciated by Howey:
The top floor had the only recognizable items which were tables. I started with the assumption that a 6-person table was 8-feet long. Using this for scale, Yeti’s drawing gives a full internal diameter of 145ft (60m 45m). This gives about 1,500 m² (16,000 ft²) meters of area per floor. The total space in Yeti’s silo would be 2.3 million square feet, which sounds like a lot at first glance.
We know that the Silo is intended to house 1000 people, and many of the floors are designated for offices, farms, or storage. How does this compare?
Based on the table of floors also found on Reddit: (), I expect that there are less than 100 floors with apartments and many of those floors will not be fully dedicated to apartments. If 100 floors had apartments (which is unlikely), those floors would need to house an average of 100 people (20 4-person families). If 50 floors (more reasonable) were fully devoted to housing, we need to house an average of 200 people per apartment floor.
In the real world, apartments are suggested to have 100-400 square feet per person . Using the estimate from Yeti, can we allocate a conservative 150 square feet (15 meters) per person on those floors?
Minimal housing would fill each floor (1500 m²) without leaving space for the central column or any other uses. This means that all other functions (offices, farms, etc) would need to jam into the remaining 50 floors. This leads me to believe that Yeti’s model is too small in diameter.
In adition to living space, we need to count work and farming space. Children would be using shared school spaces during the day. Some offices (recycling, sheriff, medical, mechanical etc.) would be on shift-work similar to a submarine and others could be unoccupied at night. So we don’t need 100% of working space per person living in an apartment. Farming space (orchards and hydroponics) seem to be less than sustainable, but mostly vegetarian diets limit the amount of space needed per person.
Normal farming (I’m not an expert) counts about 1 acre of very fertile land for vegetarians. I don’t think the Silo needs the VAST farms of the Mormon Nauvoo drum ship from the Expanse, but they probably need more agricultural space than the 14 farm levels explicitly mentioned in the books (5 acres). Someone else can make those calculations.
We have an analog to the silo in the real world, skyscrapers.
According to Wikipedia, Tower 1 of the World Trade Center in New York had 5 million square feet and housed around 17000 workers. This is a viable analogue, and we would have some leftover space after calculating housing for other functions. If we made the silo the same size as one of the towers, each floor would have a diameter of 200 feet (60 square meters) and a per-floor area of around 35,000 square feet (3,200 m²) including the unusable shaft).
This would allow just over 200 people slightly more than minimal living space on a level entirely filled with apartments, and would cut the number of fully-apartment floors down to 50 if they were crammed. This seems much more viable for a minimum estimate.
Totals: =…
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