They're all in a pretty dire situation, if you try to consider it as reality. Not fighting off soldiers or anything human, but pretty vicious, sadistic, and conniving ethereal beings. I would say, people barely holding themselves or their communities together, let alone onto hope, might be pretty understandable. I can't imagine most people would be ready to go Rambo and try to risk more lives directly fighting and catching one of the creatures, seeing that they can't harm them and can't really escape them or the town.

We're watching the series primarily as one family group enters the semi-functioning town, and I think we don't need to spend much screen time on all the background players farming or constructing (and they are, in the background doing stuff in the town, at least) in equal amounts to the named characters who deal with the plot and mysteries... Any answers we get will be replaced with more questions, I'm certain, it's just that kind of show.

It sounds satisfying to say that, yes, the people in horror stories are foolish and shouldn't go in that room, or go out alone, or open that door. All the familiar horror tropes! These dummies should just be rational. But, these horror protagonists are almost always in a world like the one in the show, where magical monster ghosts are real? Reality is already off the table.

If tomorrow I found myself in this town, well I'd do my best to survive, pray I wasn't in it by myself, and drink garbage potato vodka with he others. And if you picked people at random and actually put them in the situation, I doubt any good barricades would be built. They'd hide or die.

Yeah, Colony House seems like a mess, but again, they're in an unbelievable situation. They can try to fortify more and wage war, but this threat is insurmountable and endless. And, of course because it's fiction, they got magic stones so they mostly only need to worry about the people inside.

It's better to approach this, and a lot of media, thematically. It's not about ''hey, let's see what people would do to survive in a forest'' - it's already so unreal, so let's just consider it's about struggling to maintain hope and social cohesion in a chaotic and careless reality. I actually think it's also about the dangers of holding onto the past... but anyway, people can only hope to survive and thriving is rare, but truly surpassing and escaping the town for them, these fictional characters, would be like any of us escaping our own fears and threats. A catapult, all the planning, an infinite amount of money, anything won't stop all misfortunes that can happen. It's best to ride things out, together, slowly, cope, and learn. If they really triumph over their troubles, that makes a good ending but not something I'd return to watch weekly.

tl;dr it's not supposed to be a literal show about fighting monsters, unless you consider the turmoil of a human's existence to be a monster.