So much change in just 97 years?

That's also my biggest issue with the show. The book was set 300 years after the nuclear apocalypse so I'm not sure why Rothenburg accelerated the timeline so much.

Keep in mind that the grounders probably don't live very long so they would have had several generations within one century. Their language also didn't really begin organically, they were forced to create it in order to have a defense against the Mountain Men.

I don't even know why people are complaining about this. We've seen same change in past 20 years of any rural area. With fall of government and society, with sharp decline in population and resources, where bare survival becomes best you can get, yea, remnants of human race would easily go feral in about years time

This is something that bothers me too. There is no way that in 97 years the landscape would change that much and go back to such a dense forest so quickly. Even if we say thay the missiles or whatever destroyed all the buildings etc. there would still be debris everywhere, cement, metal, that stuff doesn't just breakdown into nothing.
On another note it also bothers me that the sky crew were there for like a week before they found a bunker full of weapons... the grounders have been wandering the same area for 97 years and didn't come across it. I know it's a work of fiction but you at least need to make it a little bit plausible to be believable!!

I agree there would be far more rubble and remnants of buildings. And your point about the language is spot on. Survivors wouldn't suddenly forget how to speak English or whatever their native language was and invent a new one.

Lets not also forget that Mount Weather is suddenly within a short walking distance of the Lincoln Memorial.

But these are just a few of the many nagging issues I have with the show. I am currently binge watching from season 1 and to me its like car crash TV. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but for some reason I keep on watching.

The grounders with their inflexible taboos and traditions. All in under five generations. They behave as if these traditions are thousands of years old.
Doubtful that traditions could spread that far in such a short length of time and much less become so ingrained.

Totally agree. I watched all three seasons, enjoyed most of it, but this timeline was the biggest unrealistic aspect for me, especially given that it was much longer in the books (which I haven't read.. just saw the timeline in a review) and that there doesn't seem to be any reason for this altered timeline. The physical changes don't even bother me so much but all the religious stuff, the lack of history knowledge, the rituals, etc. -- it would be different if the Grounders were living somewhere on an isolated island or whatever and their ancestors hadn't been a part of Western civilization, but that's not the case here. 97 years is basically four generations, five at best. Even with modern technology gone, that's not enough to completely erase history and/or prevent mouth-to-mouth telling of what happened.

This was bothering me too, particularly the geological changes. The season two intro includes an image of the Statue of Liberty buried to the crown, and a scene shows what appears to be the Golden Gate Bridge covered in soil or sand to the top of the towers, which is ridiculous if this is the nearish future. The only logical explanation is that this is set in the very distant future, but then it is unlikely that the twelve stations would all be from extant countries today. A couple of the nations, such as Uganada, are many decades, or more likely centuries, from this level of technology, so we know it is not set until at least 2100 C.E. but otherwise it is all just too familiar to us today for landmarks hundreds of feet high to be completely buried in just a few centuries from now.

Well just look how much has changed in the last 97 years even without a nuclear winter. Also this show IS set about 300 years from now. So its not like all of these changes have to have happened in 97 years realy. Some of it may have been underway well before that. We havent realy seen squat of the Earth the Skycrew left behind before the Nuclear Winter.