You actually can do most of these. When you are looking at pictures, videos or blogs, there is a box in the upper right hand corner that lets you search by latest submission.
On the members page click on the "advance search" option besides the search field will allow you to focus your search more.
I would like to search for people who are online when I am so i can work out who has the same siet useage times as I do so i can better collaborate with them..
Yeah some statistics would be very useful, its far from impossible to find survivors near you. Kinda ironic i thought this was the point of having a survivors community^^
Anyway you can find people by their location, but you have to use google and hope that the person mentioned somewhere else on the page where he is from.
Some statistics would be useful also to see how many members are active here on this site. Even my over a decade old forum has a users statistic :(