Regarding seeing Pope and Pilcher in the past, it’s possible we were just seeing them before they were frozen. I’m assuming Pope and Pam were in on this from the beginning, helping get “new recruits.” Here are the big questions:
There is no time travel; no back and forth. Everyone was in hibernation (presumably in some nuclear powered facility underground). Any supplies they have are what they stored back in 2014 or whenever they finally sealed the facility.
The vans coming and going from that facility are in ridiculously good shape for having been in storage for thousands of years. Not to mention the helicopter.
I don’t understand how someone looks at a dirty quarter and decides that it “looks really old”. Especially if it’s so encrusted with dirt that you can’t even see the images without cleaning it off.
All right, I shouldn’t try to think this hard about such things as it always gives me a headache…
How did the discussion between Pilcher and Burke’s boss take place? Was that at the time that Burke was “frozen”? And when Pilcher said “it is already underway” he was just referring to the preparations for year 4000+? I guess that works if the order of scenes shown was simply out of order, with Pilcher as the psych in the hospital CE 4000+ preceding the scenes of Pilcher as tree hugger in Wayward Pines.
So everything else that appears to be time travel is simply remote preparations? Sheriff Pope and Nurse Pam were in on it from the beginning? And when Burke’s wife/son were upset and looking for him, that was in present day when he was abducted and frozen?
Where/when do the maids shown in the tunnels live? And all of the supplies - food, meds, toilet paper, car/helicopter parts, everything - were stored for 2k yrs? I guess if I’m going to buy that they can keep a human in stasis that long with no harmful effects, I can accept that they can do as well with a piece of lettuce or a buffalo burger…
All right - here’s a goofy question - why Idaho? I’d think someplace in a middle latitude might be easier to maintain/provision in terms of climate alone.
Also, underlying many of our questions, why go through the effort of maintaining such an elaborate fiction with unwilling participants. Would be a lot easier and cheaper to support biodome volunteers happy to sip Tang instead of fresh-squeezed!
Every present day scene took place before those in the scene went into hibernation. It’s common enough for modern TV shows to jump around within the story’s timeline, so I guess I can accept that. It’s usually obvious and in this case it wasn’t but I can accept that in the name of not spoiling the surprise.
As far as food: The initial wakees (to coin a term) could have survived on some sort of freeze dried supplies (can such things really be stored for thousands of years?) but eventually they’d have to farm, which is certainly possible since it is Earth and it appears to be essentially unchanged environmentally. They’d have to wall off the fields and processing facilities but they obviously have that capability. It could even all be grown in greenhouses. The “buffalo burgers” could be wild game. Heck, it may even be buffalo.
Are they manufacturing vehicles? I don’t think that batteries, tires, belts, etc. would hold up well for thousands of years of storage. But the vehicles have old license plates so it seems like they must have been in storage.
I guess we’re picking holes, but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Yeah, while we have outside evidence to support some of what she said, we know she was being deceptive (or has been deceived herself) with regard to Pilcher. She said the kids would never meet him. The story about the family that committed suicide was also pretty obviously just a sort of boogeyman story to keep the kids from talking, and all that business about how Pilcher is their protector and they’re his special chosen ones is cult style indoctrination.
I don’t think we can trust that what she said about the origin of the “Abbys” or the purpose of Wayward Pines is accurate. And while the ruins of Boise seem to confirm that they are quite a few years past 2014, I’m not convinced it’s actually been 2,000 years. If the coins are real (and it seems like they’d be easy to fake) then they’re from IIRC 2095, so the story may actually be set only a century or so from now – possibly after some major disaster.
Wait - what kind of barrels can yuou store live fish in for that long? 
All right, I get what you are saying about the timeline, and will accept it without trying to nitpick inconsistencies. But I’m still trying to get my head around the necessary infrastructure. If they have working farms, greenhouses, warehouses, etc someplace in year 4000+ - either above or belowground, what the heck is the point of this little Potemkin village?
I guess it comes down to how many unbelievable things I’m willing to accept. OK, I’ll buy the whole disaster, incredible effort to sustain the species… But when they come yup with some ridiculously convoluted and seemingly nonsustainable way to respond to that, I start having problems with my BS detector interfering w/ my enjoyment.
Like I said, I’ll happily waste 5 more hrs on it, tho. I just hope they don’t add more and more additional “wrinkles” that force me to increasingly suspend my disbelief in additional ways.
Don’t feel bad. You can’t get your head around it because it makes no sense. I’m not trying to defend any of it, just explaining their explanation, poor as it is.
Lamia has made an interesting point. Maybe the story told by that teacher is a lie and the truth is different.
I’ve seen enough bad TV (haven’t we all?) to believe that the writers intend the truth to be exactly what she said, but I’m open to the idea that the story is a lie aimed at the minds of gullible children.
I’m trying to remember, how much did Pilcher explain to Burke when they picked him up with the helicopter?
My husband said it was like picking at a thread and unravelling a sweater. Only in this case it falls apart and you’re left with a pile of yarn. 
Continuing with the fish shoot, doesn’t it seem like Wayward Pines has far too few people to actually “save humanity”? The adults don’t seem to actually be using any past skills, so it’s not clear why they were selected. They’re not having 20 children, so they’re not re-populating. Even if there were enough of them to make a dent.
Keeping all the adults in the dark is laughable. I assume it’s to produce an Andy Griffith town by fiat for the kids. Couldn’t something similar be done with full knowledge of what’s outside?
The kids - Cult? What were all the references to “If you make it through today?” Does anyone not make it through? How do you fail? Why in groups of 3? What happens to kids who fail? Do they reckon kids too?
Why take this route at all? Why not look for a genetic solution in the 22nd century? Even bio-warfare. It’s not like Abbie’s are gonna line up for vaccines.
As soon as someone said there weren’t any airplanes, I flashed on The Village.
I’m no expert on evolution, but wouldn’t it take more than 2000 years for humans to evolve into the creatures living outside the town?
Where are the helicopters, pilots, soldiers etc. being kept?
Yeah. It’s so full of holes that I have to wonder if they’re lying to the kids.
Another thing (there are lots of fish and I’ve got plenty of ammo).
The teacher told the kids that they had to hide the truth from their parents because when one boy disobeyed and told his parents they committed suicide.
That implies that they were hiding everything from the parents before that. So what was the reason then?
I still don’t get using kidnapped people to populate this town. Even with the reckonings, eventually you will get a person who decides to go full Rorschach and start slitting throats and busting heads to get released. It is not like you have enough people to keep losing them, they would be a finite resource and having live a in a paranoid terror seems counterproductive to repopulating the species.
Right. You’d think that there’d be a full scale revolt at some point.
I guess the idea is that you revive only a few at a time and, only when they’ve been sufficiently cowed, you release a few more (we have no idea how many people they have suspended). Those who can’t be cowed are “reckoned”. So you end up keeping those who can be controlled and murdering those who can’t.
Not that I think any of that would work.
Wouldn’t the whole thing work better if they were all in it together and working towards one goal? If the Abbies are townspeople dressed up in suits I’m gonna, well, something.
I almost forgot - I didn’t post my “I don’t buy THAT!” moment of the week.
So what happened at the beginning right after Burke got to the top. Those abbies were whizzing around to the left and right of him, and he was blindly firing at random. Then one of them whizzed past and cut his arm. But they never closed in to finish him off, and in a later scene, he awakens as tho they had had enough fun and just let him lie down and sleep undisturbed. Later on, teacher tells the kids that a single abby can off a well armed soldier.
Anyone else make ANY sense of that?
And if I’m gonna go all pedantic on the show, I’d say “pack” would be a more accurate descriptor than “herd.” 
I’m starting to hope that it is all a dream. At least that would make more sense.
There are the seeds of what could have been an interesting story here. Some mad scientist working for a dictatorial government kidnaps a bunch of people to colonize a future time or different planet or whatever. Why kidnap instead of asking for volunteers? Well, dictators dictate. It’s how they do things. It’s all they know.
The victims then find themselves somewhere with no possible way to ever return home and have no choice except to live their lives where they are, even though that’s exactly what their captor wants. It could be an interesting story, if it was told in a way that made at least some sense.
It’s not plausible that all the 2015 scenes took place in 2015 before anything in 4100 happened, for one key reason: How the heck did they know in 2015 to do it if nobody from 4100 time-traveled back to tell them to?
As far as I’m concerned, time travel is required. Otherwise, 2015 Pilcher would never have started the project, nor would he have been able to convince the friggin’ Secret Service to go along with it.
Pilcher had to have gone back to 2015 after experiencing 4100. Or, in 2015, he needs a verifiable future-seeing device to convince others. There’s simply no way to justify the story without it.
That doesn’t follow. We don’t need time travel to tell us we need to do something about global warming.
They stated that it was done because Pilcher (and maybe other scientists?) had predicted that evolution would inevitably lead to the abbies and the collapse of civilization.
That’s ridiculous of course, but it’s part of the premise.
We don’t need time travel to tell us we need to do something about global warming, agreed. However, we DO need time travel to convince us to invest in a 2000-year hibernation project.
Why would anyone in 2015 care at all what’s happening in 4100? As opposed to, say, 2500? Or 3000? etc…
Ugh, really? I may have just heard what I wanted to hear. Did they explicitly say he “predicted” it? I thought she said he told them, as opposed to guessed it would happen and so convinced them to take a flier on his nutty idea.
I mean, I get that 2015(ish) Secret Service is letting multiple intruders into the White House and partying with hookers and blow in South America, but even those Keystone Kops would look askance at involuntarily committing their agents (three of them and counting) to 2000 years of hibernation.