I have not seen this in any thread yet, but I would like to hear thoughts on the Season 5 map. Last chance to avoid spoilers!
So season 5, John explains that this new, post apocalyptic world cannot be mapped and it cannot be "navigated" in the normal sense. One must go through the fears and their territories, but I have one slightly more unsettling reason that they couldn't "map" the world. It was because The Lonely prevents people from being able to navigate the world. But this might imply that the people who could resist the influence of their fears were actually members of the lost within the Lonely's domain. Of course this doesn't include when they found the underground tunnels, but to me, this makes sense. The Lonely would do its best to keep everyone separated, including the fears themselves.
Or it could have been the Vast for similar, yet completely separate reasons. The vast deals with the fear of open spaces. Obviously TMA explores that in much more detail than just "big spaces" but the Vast could be expanding the territory and forcing everything apart, making the literal world difficult to navigate because it's so vast. But keeping the world from being able to be near one another unless they've finally reached their base fear.
But what do you guys think? Is there someone who talks about this more in depth?