Life in the silo is structured on a series of lies. Bernard and IT, as representatives of Operation Fifty of the World Order, maintain order by hiding the silo’s true purpose and history, killing people who develop “dangerous” (472) ideas, and building cleaning suits that are designed to fail and deceive. Bernard is convinced these lies are necessary. He tells Lukas, “some facts, some bits of knowledge have to be snuffed out as soon as they form. Curiosity would blow across such embers and burn this silo to the ground” (430).

When Allison, and then Holston and Juliette, following in her footsteps, becomes insatiably curious about the truth about the silo’s history and the cleanings, Bernard’s pessimistic beliefs seem to be proven true. More people, including the workers of Mechanical, start to get inklings of the truth, and chaos erupts. The silo seems to be headed irrevocably toward mass breakdown and death. Even Juliette, as she sees the devastation in Silo 17, wonders whether the truth is worth it: “It turned out some crooked things looked even worse when straightened” (479).

At the end of the novel, however, Juliette rejects the idea that widespread deception of the public is necessary.