[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

I believe they said that to confuse people.
While the initial cause was indeed in the town, the progress was not.

Well, that's a matter of how we choose to interpret it, I suppose.

Not leaving the village would have saved his life for sure because

The phenomenon probably would have found a way to get him regardless. The only person who survived a "phenomenon attack" that seemed to target them was the theatrical girl, and that was only because Kouichi intervened and pushed her out of the way of the large sheet of glass.

Everyone else having died did so instantly btw.

Heart attack death wasn't instant. We don't know how Mei's cousin died, but considering that she was hospitalized, I think it's fair to say that it wasn't instant for her, either.

In my opinion, we never saw the phenomenon's killing at work outside of Yomiyama. However, there are some hints that it was able to affect those outside. For example, Kouichi's father seemed to experience memory alteration when prompted, even though he was on another continent. Also,

Spoiler for Beach episode and end of series:

knowing that Reiko was the "other," the fact that she was able to set foot outside of Yomiyama is proof that the phenomenon can go beyond the town's borders in some form.

None of it really matters, I suppose; everything that we knew about the mechanics of the phenomenon were based on observations and memories that were tampered with over the years. If the series had wanted to, it could have gone completely outside of the stated rules under the reasoning that people just hadn't observed it yet.