Silo / Wool Timeline: Every Key Date From 2049 to the End of Dust

Quick answer

Wool takes place in 2345. The silos were sealed in 2052, so by the time Juliette Nichols is sent out to clean, people have lived underground for 293 years.

The key dates are 2049 (the silos are designed), 2052 (the world ends), 2110 (Silo 12 is terminated), 2212 (Silo 40 falls and Silo 18 is reset), 2312 (Silo 17 falls) and 2345 (Wool, Third Shift and Dust).

Book dates, not TV dates

Every date here comes from Hugh Howey's novels. The Apple TV+ series Silo uses its own chronology and does not follow the books' calendar, so these years do not map onto the show. For other differences, see The Astromech's 35 differences between the Wool books and the Silo TV show. Full spoilers for all three books follow.

2049

The Architect · First Shift: Legacy

• Donald Keene, a freshman congressman from Georgia and trained architect, arrives in Washington.
• Senator Paul Thurman, a family friend, recruits him to design CAD-FAC, a supposed underground Containment and Disposal Facility for nuclear waste in Fulton County, Georgia.
• Donald works alongside his college girlfriend Anna Thurman, the senator's daughter, and his friend Congressman Mick Webb. His wife Helen is uneasy about Anna.
• Thurman, undergoing nanobot medical treatment, gives Donald a manual called the Order to memorise.
• Disturbed by what he reads, Donald secretly begins taking psychiatric medication.

2052

The End of the World · Shift

• CAD-FAC is completed, and the party's national convention is held on the site above it in Atlanta.
• The attack begins. Atlanta is destroyed and the surface is seeded with lethal nanomachines, the plan Thurman's circle called World Order Operation Fifty.
• The crowd is herded underground. Helen ends up in the wrong area and is taken into Silo 2. Anna holds Donald back, and he enters Silo 1 with Anna, Thurman and his sister Charlotte.
• Unknown to Donald, Anna has swapped his assignment with Mick Webb's. Mick goes to Silo 2 with Helen.
• All fifty silos are sealed. In Silo 1, men begin rotating cryogenic shifts; women are kept frozen.

2052–2110

The First Generations

• Inside the silos, the original survivors age and die. Their children grow up knowing only the Pact.
• In Silo 2, Helen lives under the name Karma Brewer, marries Mick Webb, has two children, works as a teacher and later a judge, and dies at eighty-two.

2110

Donald's First Shift · Shift

• Donald wakes in Silo 1 as "Troy", his memory suppressed by medication, to begin a six-month shift as its head.
• Silo 12 fails, and Troy authorises its termination. He writes a report on why it fell.
• Troy starts avoiding his pills, and his memories as Donald begin to return before he is sent back to the freezer.

2212

The Crisis Year · Second Shift: Order

• Operation Fifty is in crisis. Victor, the project's psychologist, has taken his own life after becoming obsessed with Donald's Silo 12 report.
• Thurman wakes Donald, who now remembers who he is. Anna is woken too, in secret.
• Silo 40 leads a cluster of silos that cut contact with Silo 1 and block its termination signal. Unable to end them remotely, Silo 1 resorts to physically destroying them, and Silo 40 is bombed on Donald's orders.
• Silo 18's Great Uprising: the porter Mission Jones is swept up in the violence. Donald works out that it is driven by someone who remembers the world before, and helps identify her. She is removed, and Donald and Thurman reset Silo 18 rather than terminate it: records are wiped, the population is drugged, and the uprising becomes legend.
• Donald searches the records and learns Helen's fate in Silo 2.
• At the end of the shift, Donald suits up and walks out toward Silo 2, planning to die at Helen's resting place. Thurman and the others drag him back.

Between 2212 and 2345

The Switch

• While Donald sleeps, his identity and Thurman's are switched in Silo 1's records. When he next wakes, the staff believe he is the senator.

2312

The Fall of Silo 17 · Third Shift: Pact

• An uprising breaks out in Silo 17. Sixteen-year-old Jimmy Parker is pulled out of class by his mother as violence sweeps the stairwell.
• His father, second in command of Silo 17's IT, locks Jimmy in a hidden bunker beneath the server room, gives him the key, and goes to find Jimmy's mother. Both parents are killed.
• The airlocks are opened and Silo 1 shuts Silo 17 down. Silo 1 assumes Jimmy is dead.
• Jimmy survives, hiding for years while fighting continues outside. Alone, with a cat called Shadow, he becomes Solo.

c. 2342

Allison Cleans · Wool backstory

• Three years before Wool opens, Allison, wife of Silo 18's Sheriff Holston, uncovers evidence that the view of the outside is manipulated, asks to go out, and dies after cleaning.

2345

The Present · Wool and Third Shift

• Silo 18: Holston asks to go outside, cleans and dies. Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes recruit Juliette Nichols from Mechanical as sheriff. Jahns is poisoned, and Bernard Holland of IT takes control.
• Bernard sends Juliette to clean. Her friends have given her a properly sealed suit. She refuses to clean, walks over the hill and reaches Silo 17, where she finds Solo, now about fifty, after thirty-four years alone.
• Silo 1: Donald is woken because a cleaner has walked out of view. The staff call him Thurman, and he takes the title of Shepherd.
• Mechanical rises against IT in Silo 18. Juliette returns, Bernard is sent outside to die, and Lukas Kyle becomes head of IT, formally inducted by Donald.
• Donald discovers Anna's swap of 2052 and poisons her. In her locker he finds the path to the Pact: only one silo was ever meant to survive, and every other silo, Silo 1 included, was to be terminated.
• Donald wakes the real Thurman, shoots him and returns him to his cryopod. He wakes Charlotte and opens contact with Silo 18.

After Wool

The End of the Silos · Dust

• Juliette, now mayor of Silo 18, uses the buried digging machine to tunnel toward Silo 17, where Solo cares for Elise and the other children.
• In Silo 1, Donald and Charlotte rebuild a drone and see living land beyond the hills. Donald's health fails.
• Anna's body is discovered. Thurman is revived and retakes Silo 1. Donald is beaten and imprisoned.
• Riots erupt in Silo 18. Thurman terminates it, flooding it with nanomachines. Lukas dies. Around two hundred people escape to Silo 17; Shirly seals the tunnel behind them.
• Darcy helps Charlotte escape and is shot. Thurman shoots Donald, who fires at the bomb and destroys Silo 1, killing Thurman.
• Juliette leads the survivors out beyond the poisoned zone to clean air, green land and stored supplies. Charlotte joins them.

Wool

Set almost entirely in 2345, inside Silo 18 and Silo 17.

Shift

Spans 2049 to 2345 in three parts. First Shift: Legacy alternates 2049–2052 with 2110. Second Shift: Order covers 2212 in Silo 1 and Silo 18. Third Shift: Pact pairs 2312 in Silo 17 with 2345 in Silo 1, catching up with Wool.

Dust

Picks up straight after Wool and Shift and follows Silos 18, 17 and 1 to the end of the trilogy.