Drawing loosely upon both the true stories of the Milgram experiments and Zimbardo's prison experiment, Shelter is an exploration of the ways people comply with and rebel against authority in a unfamiliar situation.
In the midst of preparing for a weekend trip Zoey is suddenly overcome with dizziness and faints. Men with gas masks move in and transfer her to an underground facility that was set up as a nuclear fallout station. Now it's being used to house the survivors of a viral outbreak that had a 99.9% kill rate. A rare few dropped into a deep coma for days before awakening, untouched by the virus.
The station is run by a bizarre and sinister doctor, who is recruiting survivors for his own plan to restore the population of the world. He treats Zoey with kindness at first, but gradually his plan to subordinate her will to his own becomes clear. The question is, will Zoey agree to help him with his plan, or rebel? Initially, the urge to rebel is quite strong. But every time he seems completely crazy, the doctor gives a logical explanation for what he is doing. The doctor keeps Zoey high on narcotics until she is addicted; she needs her rest and is overly stressed from the ordeal. He is mutilating patients, cannibalizing them for food; it's the only way to survive, and they are badly injured, would die anyway. Still, some of his behaviors are clearly outside of what is necessary and normal, and Zoey wants out.
Zoey cannot imagine what she would do if she left, however. She has seen first hand the lethal chaos that awaits outside, via the security cameras trained on the outside world. She tries to escape several times, but each time the doctor calmly talks her back into bed, and, anyway, there's nothing out there for her, except death. Outsiders come and go, all raving about the horrors outside, and the emergency broadcast system has nothing but death and destruction to offer, no hope at all.
The "training" of Zoey as his assistant gradually escalates, as he coaxes her to be an active participant, complicit in his acts. Each time, he presents his cruel solution as the only reasonable one. Zoey's drug-addled, frightened mind can do nothing but obey the twisted logic of the doctor. She willingly electrocutes a "volunteer" as part of an experiment; she holds a woman down as he performs emergency surgery on an unanesthetized patient. Soon, she is acting as his "nurse," though still constantly wavering between obedience and rebellion.
The turning point comes when one of the survivors that comes into the shelter is a man with whom Zoey "hooked up" a few months back. The doctor, sensing that the two will band against him, plays to the man's machismo, encouraging him to see woman as inferior and subordinate, giving him the power to make rules and have sex with the female survivors. The man is quickly won over by the doctor, and turns against Zoey. She electrocutes him to keep her status in the shelter. She has become a ruthless, amoral survivor.
The real experiments that this story is based on showed that ordinary people could do terrible things in high stress situations when ordered to do so by a superior. Shelter shows us, step by step, how such behavior could occur in an emergency. The relationship between the doctor and Zoey is fascinatingly complex, and the surrealistic, just-over-the-edge presentation of events works very effectively to show how a person could become a monster in a crisis. Shelter will make you ask what you would do, and will not let you off with any easy answers.
In the midst of preparing for a weekend trip Zoey is suddenly overcome with dizziness and faints. Men with gas masks move in and transfer her to an underground facility that was set up as a nuclear fallout station. Now it's being used to house the survivors of a viral outbreak that had a 99.9% kill rate. A rare few dropped into a deep coma for days before awakening, untouched by the virus.
The station is run by a bizarre and sinister doctor, who is recruiting survivors for his own plan to restore the population of the world. He treats Zoey with kindness at first, but gradually his plan to subordinate her will to his own becomes clear. The question is, will Zoey agree to help him with his plan, or rebel? Initially, the urge to rebel is quite strong. But every time he seems completely crazy, the doctor gives a logical explanation for what he is doing. The doctor keeps Zoey high on narcotics until she is addicted; she needs her rest and is overly stressed from the ordeal. He is mutilating patients, cannibalizing them for food; it's the only way to survive, and they are badly injured, would die anyway. Still, some of his behaviors are clearly outside of what is necessary and normal, and Zoey wants out.
Zoey cannot imagine what she would do if she left, however. She has seen first hand the lethal chaos that awaits outside, via the security cameras trained on the outside world. She tries to escape several times, but each time the doctor calmly talks her back into bed, and, anyway, there's nothing out there for her, except death. Outsiders come and go, all raving about the horrors outside, and the emergency broadcast system has nothing but death and destruction to offer, no hope at all.
The "training" of Zoey as his assistant gradually escalates, as he coaxes her to be an active participant, complicit in his acts. Each time, he presents his cruel solution as the only reasonable one. Zoey's drug-addled, frightened mind can do nothing but obey the twisted logic of the doctor. She willingly electrocutes a "volunteer" as part of an experiment; she holds a woman down as he performs emergency surgery on an unanesthetized patient. Soon, she is acting as his "nurse," though still constantly wavering between obedience and rebellion.
The turning point comes when one of the survivors that comes into the shelter is a man with whom Zoey "hooked up" a few months back. The doctor, sensing that the two will band against him, plays to the man's machismo, encouraging him to see woman as inferior and subordinate, giving him the power to make rules and have sex with the female survivors. The man is quickly won over by the doctor, and turns against Zoey. She electrocutes him to keep her status in the shelter. She has become a ruthless, amoral survivor.
The real experiments that this story is based on showed that ordinary people could do terrible things in high stress situations when ordered to do so by a superior. Shelter shows us, step by step, how such behavior could occur in an emergency. The relationship between the doctor and Zoey is fascinatingly complex, and the surrealistic, just-over-the-edge presentation of events works very effectively to show how a person could become a monster in a crisis. Shelter will make you ask what you would do, and will not let you off with any easy answers.