Just returned from a short vacation in Broken Bow, OK. Its near a National Forest and state park. The areas I saw are heavily forested small mountains or foot hills. Very relaxing and pretty. It was good to escape the city for awhile. But where are the corn fields?
So either it's a continuity error(how surprising) or in the future forests are strip logged to provide more farmland to feed the population.
Just another case of typical Hollywood geography. As far as Hollywood is concerned, Oklahoma is rural, and rural means flat fields of grain.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Brannon Braga thought Broken Bow was a fictional place. Then again, I read it on the internet...
We're talking about the same dude who thought TATV was a good idea. Makes the Broken Bow thing a lot less harder to believe.
It's possible it was just a coincidence. I though for years that Dawson's Creek was a Canadian show because there actually is a town named Dawson's Creek in British Columbia
Don't know about Iowa. But there is some flat land to the south. So I guess they could just say Broken Bow is the nearest town.
Research? What is this bizarre concept? As others have already said, it's set in the futuree so it's easy to get around the fact that it's different from how it looks today. Broadly speaking, issues about research (or lack thereof) come up when dealing with contempary or historical settings. If you want an example from TNG how about "The Royale" which gives a tempature below absolute zero. It's almost as if when goiung through the rewritting process someone changed degrees F to degrees C.
Damn, you're right! And I've BEEN there and our daughter lived there (the city, not the aquarium). I guess its just a sign of aging.