[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by desrtsku

@Frodo read the manga.

No need. Sufficient information is available to make several educated guesses.

Originally Posted by frodonk

Yeah sure, we could say that "there haven't been a titan attack inside the walls for 100 years" so they haven't thought about these.

The inertia that comes from 100 years of accumulated complacency isn't as easy to overcome as you may think. Singapore was once considered an impregnable fortress, the British Empire's bastion in the Far East. But it was conquered, from the north, through thick jungles that the British never expected an invader to exploit.

From Ep1, we already have the impression that people weren't very happy to be "throwing away" their taxes on futile reconnaissance missions beyond Wall Maria. So, it's not difficult to imagine that people being leery about spending money on underground fortifications that they didn't seem to need. Of course, everything changed once Wall Maria was breached. But hindsight is always 20/20.

Then, there's hubris. The Titanic had enough lifeboats for only one-third of its total capacity. Even then, those lifeboats were considered extraneous at the time, because the ship was touted to be "unsinkable". Well, again, hindsight is always 20/20, is it not?

The above is just me trying to rationalise the story's premise. I understand your criticisms, but let's just put them down to details that the mangaka didn't think through very thoroughly.

Originally Posted by frodonk

Was it really hard to dig at least one escape tunnel from the middle of the town into inside wall maria? that way most people would've had somewhere to go in cases of emergencies. Although i get the effect they wanted to convey when they showed people panicking and running around when the titans finally breached the wall, didn't they have the foresight to at least have one proper escape plan rather than just telling people to run for the ships and the gates?

Based on what Eren explained early in Ep2, Shiganshina is designed to bait titans, drawing them away from the other parts of Wall Maria, thus allowing the Stationary Troops to focus their limited resources around the town.

I would guess that the contingency, in case a "pocket town" like Shiganshina (there were 12 in total, four on the perimeter of each Wall) falls, would be to funnel the invading titans along a single route and a single exit (not counting the river). Again, in theory, this would allow the soldiers to maximise their stretched resources, as they would need to defend only one axis of movement.

Evidently, the military planners did not consider how such a design could also turn into a deathtrap should a breach occur. More likely than not, though, they never expected a Wall to fall so quickly — no one knew that colossal- and armoured-class titans existed, so no one planned for them. That's the way complacency works.

And if you find that hard to believe, remember that even in real-life, armies the world over are being trained to fight the previous war. It's not that no one knows that future warfare would be different, but when you don't know exactly it would look, it's difficult to devise effective training routines to meet a "future" threat.