I just watched Jurrasic Park. Brilliant movie. I then watched Jurrasic World. It’s a vaguely fun watch, but for me personally the lack of compelling writing and the blatantly poor worldbuilding ruin it for me.

So, when I say “monster park”, I mean dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park

First, I’m going to criticise the worldbuilding of the first film

• They should have solid walls
• They should have several people working on security

These are, generally, the only issues I have with the premise of the film. Compared to Jurassic World’s issues, these are basically nothing and completely justifiable. This is because of one simple fact: the park is a prototype.

The electrified fences are perfectly reasonable for the park. Under normal operation, they alone are enough to keep the dinosaurs from breaking through. The enclosures are also plentiful large, something shown in the film when they don’t see any dinosaurs. The only reason the dinos have to go any close to the fences is if food is specifically placed there. The T-rex doesn’t break out of confinement and harass the people because it’s an action-disaster film, but because it just ate some food. It is an animal and it behaves like an animal.

That being said, if the fences remained when the park opened, then breaches would be an inevitability, but deaths could realistically be avoided by just not operating the park under adverse weather conditions and then spending a lot of money re-containing the escaped animals, accounting for hunted herbivores, and repairing infrastructure.

The other issue is that one person single-handedly coded the security system. While several people had access, they did not vet the code and did not realise the rigged system failures. But, much like the electrified fences, this is a realistic decision made by the park manager. It’s the 80s. It’s a prototype park, it makes sense to just have one person make the park’s security system (and give multiple people access, which is what happens). It is a huge security risk, as that one person has free reign to give themselves complete control over security. This is exactly what happens, and it is this sabotage that leads to the other park failures (meaning they would have been fine under normal safety conditions).

Ideally, even in the 80s, the security system would be created by a company of people likely proprietarily hired. You could even still have the plot! Just have the whole team in on it, or maybe all but the saboteur is on leave and the saboteur pushes the changes and does their sabotage during this brief period of loneliness.

I also think that employee security isn’t seriously handled, but its a prototype park and enough security is provided for this. Employees are given free access to guns which are plentiful to kill all but the T-rex. Ideally, there would be a small security team protecting the building. This is actually addressed by the park manager at the end of the film: they recognise that they utilised automation too heavily and said that the next park would have more hands-on action. The oversight of not having any weaponry to deal with the T-rex during breaches is acceptable in the prototype park because there are many structures which a T-rex can’t enter, and the T-rex makes the ground shake when its approaching. These are poor contingencies, but contingencies nonetheless.

Jurassic World

I will not get over the ridiculously inadequate safety systems in Jurassic World. If this park actually existed in 2015 under the jurisdiction of any nation with any legislature that requires any level of safety, it would be shut down immediately. Even if it wasn’t subject to government scrutiny, its systems are so bad that any press would have a field time exposing how ridiculously inadequate and poorly designed the park is. Anyone doing a mediocre amount of research before visiting would hear of the blatant safety issues from forums of random autistic people complaining about the park’s safety.

A commercial and corporate theme park like this would and should have safety critical systems in place. If the systems of the park don’t work because of profit or something, then that’s the fault of the capitalist system and not any individual or entity, and the underlying system should be changed instead.

Regardless, if you want to avoid constant breaches, harm from breaches, endless lawsuits, you need to make a safety-critical park. I have designed this park, and I’m going to use events from the film to describe this safety-critical park and how the film would never have happened, and if it did how loss of life would be minimal.

The general theme is: ZERO TOLERANCE these are living, breathing animals, interacting with people. Not only that, but these are genuinely dangerous creatures. A baby triceratops is not a pig, it is an armoured trample monster with two spears on its face and a rhinoceros horn. The expectation is that someone is getting stabbed, stomped on, or whacked. But we want to have fun, so we alleviate this risk.

Overpopulation

Jurrasic World as presented in the film is overpopulated.

Throughout the film we are shown several shots of tens of herbivores packed in a small space. During a scene with the gyro-ball, several members of several species are running together in the same direction without a predator. This is unrealistic, herbivores would naturally spread to reduce competition and you should not crowd an enclosure to the point where there is competition. These are animals in captivity and they should be given a life of indulgence. For the same reason, there should be enough sources of water as to not force animals to drink with others when they would otherwise not.

For the future of this analysis, I will be assuming that there is a reasonable density of animals in the park and for each pen. This is less about safety criticality and more about having a functional zoo. Stressed animals are bad for everyone.

Baby Herbivore Play Area

You just have like 12 baby herbivores in an area as large as a small town park. These are dangerous animals! A playful experience with these creatures should involve a trained handler. The animals should be treated with respect and not placed into a small area with a dozen other baby herbivores amongst a bunch of screaming, touchy children. This situation is extremely tolling on the creatures and will inevitably lead to a child getting stomped on, bitten, or otherwise harmed.

The “baby herbivore play area” (I forgot the name presented in the film) should follow these guidelines:

1. Every animal should have a trained handler to make sure neither the children nor the animal are harmed. If a dedicated handler per animal is not feasible, one handler could overlook three animals but this would be a stressful job
2. Every animal should be given a comfortable amount of space
3. Children should be instructed to act calmly around the animals. There should be ZERO TOLERANCE for any poor behaviour that endangers the animal or the child. No screaming, running, teasing. Identifying this behaviour is the job of the animal handler. They can only handle as many animal-child pairings as, like, a day-care worker could.

If you follow these guidelines, people will get hurt, but it will be a trivial and legally excusable issue and the fault of, like, a parent or guardian who should be on site unless this is literally just a babysitting service with dinosaurs as entertainment

Enclosure Guidance

One gaping flaw in the park’s enclosure design is the lack of any vestibules, or “air-locks”. Every entrance to an enclosure needs to have two doors with an area between them. Specifically:

1. Every entrance and exit to an enclosure needs to have two doors in an air-lock system. One door in the system must remain mechanically closed at all times. Ideally, this also applies to secondary human entrances that act as escapes, but this might be a mechanical impossibility in far-flung edges of the enclosure so the possibility of both doors being open is allowed for human emergency exits
2. One of these doors must remain closed at all times and there should be no override. If a door fails, it needs to be repaired.
3. Human entrances require redundancy. While an enclosure may have a single entrance for animals and vehicles, it must have several entrances for humans as in door-sized entrance / exits
4. Main entrances such as large doors for vehicles or large animals should not have controls accessible via the ground. Instead, they should be operated remotely on an observing deck (which may be left vacant when no-one is in the enclosure) or from central command. Operation must be on-demand and prompt.
5. Human entrances must have some mechanism only usable by people. Some animals can use door handles. Instead, entrances could use biometrics or some other form of human-only interaction.
6. Similarly to before, human entrances should be unlockable from the inside only by humans. They should be lockable from the outside without a key, and may be unlocked by a key.
7. Every vestibule should have a camera, phone, or other communication equipment. People entering or exiting enclosures must be logged and accounted for, signing out or reporting to some office when they leave. If you follow these rules, no animals can escape enclosures without breaking the walls, which generally should be an impossibility. This is because the inside always remains separate from the outside.

This would prevent the indominus rex from escaping in Jurassic World. Following these hard safety rules, a guard could not have opened the door to the enclosure, allowing the rex to escape. Even if the operators of the main vestibule opened the first door to let him into the vestibule, once the rex had broken through they would not be allowed to open the next door, and the men in the enclosure would have died, assuming no other handling of the event stopping this eventuality. Chris Pratt would have had to find a human entrance to get out, or he would have had to remain in danger of death to protect the safety of everyone outside the enclosure.

Breach Policy

In a dinosaur park, we can do a lot to prevent breaching. But we should always have contingencies in case they do occur.

In a park with deadly creatures that pose a threat to human life by mere proximity, we must have a ZERO TOLERANCE policy when it comes to the loss of human life. Investigation is of the lowest priority. Locating and re-containing or killing the creature is the top priority

Suspected breach A suspected breach usually occurs when a fault in the perimeter is discovered, such as a weak or broken wall. It can also just happen. On a hunch, someone might declare they suspect an animal is not in the pen. This declaration should be taken with the utmost sincerity.

1. If a breach is suspected, immediately consult the animal trackers.
2. If a tracker is outside of the enclosure, move on to the search part of the procedure
3. Verify the location of all trackers with drones or helicopters. If a tracker position is erroneous, move on to the search part of the procedure. It may be relevant to direct nearby visitors to the panic rooms, or to other parts of the park.

Search If you know an animal is not in the pen, the search for it begins. This is a dangerous situation, so:

Deploy drones and helicopters. You can search a lot of area with these alone using thermal imaging, which can be relied upon unless you know that any of your animals can not produce an infrared signal in which case this system shouldn’t be relied on when searching for that animal. Aerial search with optimised patterns can find a breached animal surprisingly quickly even when scanning large areas. You could also track an animal’s path as it escapes if they leave clues or footprints.

At least one helicopter should be sent to the site with weaponry suitable for sedating or killing the breached animal. The killing ones are strictly required, however sedation is merely useful.

Handle Once a breached animal is found, there are two possible action plans:

1. sedate the animal. This is only to be done if the animal can be made incapacitated before causing death.
2. Kill the animal. You should already have a helicopter with sufficient weaponry deployed. If the creature is too close to causing harm for a sedative to stop the harm, it should be killed with the appropriate weaponry held on the helicopter.

Sedated animals can then be lead back to the enclosure. Repairing the enclosure wall is of maximum priority and ways to quickly patch up or secure the breach should be readily available. In the worst case scenario, you can sedate all animals in the enclosure or only ones that get too close to the breach.

In the film This breach policy alone would have been enough to contain the indominus rex. Upon not finding its thermal signal, they would have got the tracker and realised it was still in the pen. After learning of its ability to just not have an infrared signal, they would now adapt to that.

If the indominus rex was actually being smart and wanting to utilise all its cards, it would have somehow found a way to lob its tracker over the fence or breach by leaving its tracker still in the pen. In the former, the tracker would be located easily via drone, then the actual animal would have been found in the pen. If the rex managed to hide via camouflage after lobbing its tracker over the fence, a park-wide search would begin and as it slowly became clear that the rex was very good at hiding, the park would enter panic and slowly evacuate until they did a more thorough search of the enclosure for the rex. The rex would have no chance to escape, even if some dumbos decided to investigate some random claw marks on the enclosure. It would either eat these guys, giving away its position and many of its abilities, or just have to stay in the enclosure never getting a chance to escape because of the airlock system.

Panic Rooms

Evacuation of an island is not feasible, especially in a crisis situation. The ports could become unsafe, and then you have a bunch of people near a thing that could kill them. In a park that contains animals that can shatter your ribs accidentally just by turning around, panic rooms are a relatively low-cost and immensely secure way of saving lives. Visitors should be made aware of the location of their nearest panic room at all times, and constantly reminded by security and staff.

Panic rooms should be installed around where many people are during a normal visiting day. Panic rooms should have an airlock themselves, strictly human-sized. They should be built as to withstand the force of the largest animal standing on them. The doors of airlocks should be accessible from both sides using human-only door designs. The doors of the airlocks should also be able to be locked and opened from the inside, so that someone inside the airlock (preferably a security officer) can help people through and make decisions if people are being chased by a human-sized creature.

If an animal gets into the airlock, the security officer or someone else operating the door could lock both of them, containing the animal. While it is fine if there is only one airlock to a panic room, adding several would help people enter safely.

The maximum number of visitors is defined by panic room capacity. Safely directing visitors to these panic room is the highest priority in the event of a breach, as it is unsafe to handle large animals with guns if there are visitors around.

In the Film Panic rooms if implemented according to guidance would have saved the vast majority of people in the film. Unfortunately, a thorough security team would have to exist to handle the crisis, or else the people in panic rooms everywhere in the park (once the avian dinosaurs escaped) would have to wait for military intervention to get them out.

Underground Tunnels

Some massive theme parks have tunnel networks to help employees move across the park. These tunnels should be made to the same standards as the panic rooms but not used as a replacement for panic rooms. It would be reasonable to put panic rooms inside of the underground tunnels if convenient.

A Reasonable Security Team

In a dinosaur park on the scale of Jurassic World, the security team in Jurassic world is ridiculously inadequate and above that made the worst decisions once the rex escaped. The whole point of safety codes is to ensure the systematic safety of lives. The stupidest thing is hunting the rex on foot with non-lethals completely inadequate to take it down. Those security officers were sent out to die for the plot.

For a park on the scale of Jurassic World, a much more reasonable security detail should have been present.

Security Officers

Scattered around the park as general staff should be security officers. They are not required to carry a weapon, but should be given access to them and realistically should be advised to carry one around enclosures of hostile animals. The primary role of security officers is to receive critical safety information from central command and to help visitors enter panic rooms. They don’t even need to be trained that much.

Security Officers should be instructed to send visitors to the panic rooms if they lose contact with central command. There should be no penalty for erroneously sending visitors to panic rooms if there is any reasonable safety concern.

Paramilitaries

A good force of paramilitaries is absolutely necessary, and judging its size is something a park manager should do. I would recommend one paramilitary force per five enclosures. Paramilitary groups should have the equipment to handle with large dinosaurs on foot, this could simply be a rocket propelled grenade and an off-road squad car. Life could be safeguarded further by giving paramilitaries access to remote tools that could do their job for them.

Even better, have a small government military base on the island. Handling animals is something militaries are historically unequipped for, but with park guidance and a focus on protecting park infrastructure (such as panic rooms and therefore the people) a government military force could easily protect a park.

A fleet of helicopters is also strictly necessary, and the number of helicopters in the film is genuinely unrealistic. For a park of that size, three well equipped military helicopters should be present with dedicated pilots. These helicopters should be used to locate and track escaped and enclosed dinosaurs and swiftly kill them if they start posing a threat to human life.

In addition to that, there should be helicopters in use by the island’s fire service, hospitals, and police. The rescue helicopters would likely be greatest in number due to the large scope of the park and the lack of road infrastructure. These helicopters could easily be adopted by the security team if the need arises, such as in a massive crisis.

Crisis Handling

I have already detailed the procedure in case of an animal breach in the breach policy. The main theme is that aerial methods should be prioritised. If going on ground is necessary, the security team should remain in open areas and should strictly not enter forests or places of low visibility. They should have a vehicle with them capable of out speeding the animals of the park.

If, say, a deadly carnivore enters a forest, you DO NOT track it down on foot. Get a helicopter and some drones to search for it (ideally with the trackers). You can then decide how to act from there, but if it’s unsafe it makes zero sense to send in a ground team (such as with the rex in the film). If aerial control isn’t sufficient to handle the escaped animal, ground teams should encircle the forest, prioritising positioning in areas with infrastructure.

In the case of mass breaches, where the present security detail is considered inadequate to handle the present threat, they should either be focused around the park centre, enter panic rooms, or otherwise remain safe and collected. The park should contact an outside military force to help evacuate the island. Such an effort should be automatic in case the island’s communication infrastructure falls and the island doesn’t regularly send an “okay” message to a mainland.

In the Film Following these rules for a security detail would mean you have a task force perfectly capable of handling multiple breaches at once. If the park was reasonably populated with dinosaurs, it would take several tens of highly aggressive animals escaping to overwhelm the military force. The critical thing is, even if more dinosaurs escape than the team could handle at once, everyone in the park would be safe in panic rooms and the security team would be able to handle the escapees one by one.

A breach on a scale in which even the safety detail is unable to respond would require everyone to enter panic rooms and wait for a military evacuation effort. Such an eventuality is so unlikely if all safety systems are established.

The Dome Enclosure

Keeping avian dinosaurs is a serious challenge. In the film, a huge population of highly aggressive avians are kept in the same enclosure. The aggressiveness of the avians is greatly overstated in the film, but still any escape would endanger global ecosystems and the security of the park in general.

You don’t even need that many avians in the park! Four to six should be plenty to ensure a cohesive group that could be observed by visitors in the dome. If you must have more, build another dome.

An automatic turret could be placed on top of the dome. In the case of a breach, the turret could automatically shoot down (either with bullets or sedatives) any escaped avian animal. If that turret is structurally infeasible, such a turret should be installed on a truck or helicopter and deployed in a similar manner.

The aerial dinos in the movie are highly aggressive and are shown taking down a plane alone. Although this likely wouldn’t be the case in a realistic setting, it would mean that a flock of escaped avians would essentially pose a no-fly zone for helicopters, and ground forces would have to be used. Ideally, a helicopter could still be deployed and kept a safe distance from the birds.

Aerial animals are highly mobile and if a breach were to occur, the entire population of the park should be sent into panic rooms.

In the Film Using my procedure terminology, the rex’s escape would only be a breach. It would not have been a crisis until the avian enclosure is broken.

It would require an unrealistic amount of human incompetence to let the rex reach the avian enclosure. If it somehow managed, the dome turret could be used to kill it. If the dome turret was unavailable, and the enclosure was still shattered, the entire park should enter immediate lockdown and handling the aerial dinosaurs becomes the highest priority until the air is safe again.

The Sea Enclosure

Keeping a Mosasaurus of that size is an unrealistic task. But, if the park somehow managed to afford the cost of constructing and maintaining the water tank, it would be relatively safe compared to the other enclosures. I have only a few recommendations:

1. The walls should be taller than the Mosasaur can jump out
2. The Mosasaur MUST have a proximity and remote explosive embedded into some critical organ. This is to immediately terminate it in the conceivably impossible situation where it escapes captivity and enters the ocean Funnily enough, the proximity explosive is overkill. According to Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs cannot produce a certain protein and would die if the park didn’t maintain their supply of it. The Mosasaur would die due to a lack of this protein if it did escape (in fact all of the dinosaurs would if the park stopped functioning, making the island a dinosaur graveyard if it was destroyed). The explosive is just a radical contingency if for some reason the protein system was faulty.

Final Analysis of the Film

Here’s how the film’s events would have not happened if this thorough security detail were implemented:

1. The Indominus Rex is not found on enclosure thermals, and scratches are found on the wall.

If present security staff suspect a breach, which under these conditions would be reasonable, they would follow the breach procedure.

1. All staff except safety-critical staff would enter the nearest panic room
2. Before anything else happens, the rex’s tracker would be located and determined to be inside of the cell
3. A drone or helicopter would be used to verify the position of the dinosaur.
4. If the dinosaur was thermally and visually camouflaging, then the dinosaur would not be found on an initial inspection
5. A massive search effort would be launched and all nearby park populations would enter a panic room
6. Drones and Chris Pratt would determine that there are no signs of the dinosaur leaving the enclosure from the outside: no tracks
7. The dinosaur would eventually be found as drones fly closer to the tracker, finding a dinosaur that’s thermally and visually camouflaged
8. The dinosaur is determined contained, and the new capabilities of the dinosaur can now be considered for future potential breaches.
9. An investigation of the incident can now be launched. End of film. No-one dies, the rex doesn’t escape, no-one enters the rex enclosure.

2. Chris Pratt and co stupidly enter the enclosure before the dinosaur is located

If they still did this, which they shouldn’t be allowed to by security staff but might anyway for the plot, the rex still couldn’t have escaped.

1. The tracker would be determined to be inside the cell and Chris Pratt and co would be immediately recalled, preferably via the nearest human entrance.
2. If absolutely necessary, the main gate could be opened by present staff outside the enclosure. The guard could then enter the vestibule, the door closing behind them.
3. If the rex broke through the door, the second door could not be opened. The guard in the enclosure could not open the exterior door, and the present staff shouldn’t be able to open it either, if they get emotional about the guard being eaten.
4. The guard and Chris Pratt would remain in the enclosure. They would either have to use a human entrance (which could be attached to the vestibule) or get eaten.
5. The dinosaur would remain contained and no further risk to human life would occur.

In this situation, a good legal defence for the park would be just how stupid Chris Pratt and co were to enter the enclosure before the dinosaur was located. They would have done this against a security procedure they would have been made aware of. Their actions should be considered self-endangerment

Also, ideally in this situation, the dinosaur would be killed before anyone was harmed. Due to the inherent danger of the rex, the local security team alone should have access to sufficient weaponry to execute the dino. This weaponry could be easily deployed from the enclosure walls around the vestibule.

Ideally, if the dinosaur had to be killed, Chris Pratt and co could be sued by the park for unnecessarily endangering their lives and blatantly going against park policy. I’m not sure if this type of legal claim by the company has any basis, but their stupidity should at least be partially alleviated by some insurance.

3. The Indominus Rex escapes the enclosure

Although a near impossibility, we still need to consider cases like this. For the rex to escape, either central command would have had to override the exterior door with the rex in the vestibule, or the walls of the enclosure would have been inadequate to contain the rex and it would have been able to escape regardless.

1. Common breach procedure: the rex would be tracked using the implant. All nearby ground personnel, including safety-critical personnel in the immediate area, should enter panic rooms.
2. A helicopter equipped with weaponry sufficient to quickly kill the rex should be deployed alongside a number of drones
3. Once the rex’s implant was found torn off in a forest by a drone, tracking the dinosaur from within the forest should be attempted by drones and the helicopter
4. If possible, the dinosaur should be sedated before it could possibly cause any death. Otherwise, the helicopter tracking it would have to immediately kill it, preferably with a rocket-propelled grenade or high-calibre weaponry.
5. If the dinosaur for some reason isn’t found using drones or helicopters, reasonable escalation would expand search efforts and close all parts of the park that the rex could possibly reach without being spotted. Paramilitaries should be deployed to these areas and a free-fire policy should be allowed once all civilians are safe in panic rooms
6. The dinosaur would eventually reach a populated area or would be found promptly by the massive search effort, killed or sedated, and the situation would be handled. The film would be over.

In the film, the dinosaur leaves a very obvious path of dead bodies. It would be incredibly easy to track and kill. However, in this worst-case scenario, it remains hidden. The conditions for the search effort to fail would require the rex not kill anything and not reach places with infrastructure or humans. Depending on how long it remained hidden, those parts of the park could be evacuated and paramilitaries would remain deployed locking off the dinosaur from entering any populated area of the park.

The search effort could last several days if necessary. I have it in good faith that the dinosaur would eventually be found. If not, then it’s just hiding somewhere and doesn’t pose a threat to any life or the park in general. As a company, you’d lose access to wherever it could be, but this would necessarily be wild forests that you wouldn’t be using. The worst running cost of the escape would be the absolutely critical continued search effort.

Eventually, the dinosaur would die from starvation. Not only would it not be able to kill any animals on risk of being immediately found, it would eventually run out of that protein that they biologically cannot create as assured by the lab. Even if the carcass of the rex isn’t found after a period of time where it would have reasonably starved, it would be reasonable to slowly open up the areas of the park which it could attack if it were somehow still alive (although an impossibility). These areas would require additional safety infrastructure until the body was found.

In the worsest case scenario, the dinosaur attacks the park after months where it should have died from starvation or lack of the aforementioned protein. Ideally, the dinosaur would be seen approaching and people could be directed to panic rooms as guards, now equipped with rex-killing weapons, could kill it. Otherwise, the rex would be surprise attacking a populated area which should be impossible as the areas should have some clearing due to the extant possibility the rex is still alive.

There is no legal defence if the dinosaur causes harm. It was a serious failure of drone operators and safety staff. The systems were perfectly reasonable, and the completely wild and unrealistic capabilities of the dinosaur could never have been accounted for.

4. The Avian Cage Breaks

Somehow, the avian cage breaks. This wouldn’t be a fault of the indominus: it would have been found and killed by helicopters or turrets before reaching the dome assuming any level of competency from security staff.

Anyway, all escaping avians would be immediately shot by the dome’s automatic turret. Bar this, the entire park would be in crisis and all non-safety critical people would enter panic rooms. Ground teams and air teams keeping a fair distance would be able to handle the avian dinosaurs assuming a realistic level of competency.

5. The raptors escape

What? Why? Why would you let them out without attaching some remote explosive to them in case they rebel? That’s just so stupid, implant them with explosives! They are a threat to literally everything!

6. You let the Rex out

How would you do this? You’d have to somehow get it into the vestibule, which you probably couldn’t do fast enough to fight the escaped rex before a helicopter could kill it. You’re just stoking the fire, absolute incompetency

Conclusion

• A rudimentarily thorough safety detail would have stopped the events of Jurassic World from happening
• No-one would have died if they had adequate panic rooms
• The situation could have been handled promptly and safely if they used man’s aerial dominance to track and kill the rex
• A dinosaur park could be completely feasibly safe with the safety details outlined in this report