They have a point
They have a point
55 comments
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It's not about dinosaurs or fences, the whole story is about the danger of underpaying your IT guy.
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Actually just underspending on IT in general. Having one single guy for the entire infrastructure of a theme park would already be insane on its own, but it's also a genetic science/breeding facility and zoo, and the only civilization on the island. That's way tf too much for one single IT guy. He could have been the highest paid staff member and you could still hardly blame him for what he did.
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But there were two IT guys…
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If I recall correctly he was the boss of a team back wherever his company was. It kinda makes sense he would have knowledge of the dinos, but most of his team was kept in the dark to keep it from leaking.
Still though you need at least a couple people on site.
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The IT guy underbid on a contracted job and wanted more money. It wasn't like he could just be given a raise or a bonus because he wasn't a regular employee.
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Ooooh good point.
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One of the most major points of the movie is that Hammond spared many, many expenses; it's not really a novel observation when the movie shoves it in your face.
In Hammond's defense, the fences do actually work well. However, once Nedry cuts the electricity, they become basically useless. The fences work, but the security system around them doesn't, and there needs to be a backup if the electricity fails.
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Right? The sticking point is that Nedry wanted more money, and he compromised the system, to get paid. If he had been paid a better wage he couldn't have been bought as easily by a competitor.
NEDRY: (laughs) I am totally unappreciated in my time. You could run this whole park from this room with minimal staff for up to three days. You think that kind of automation is easy? [sips a soda] Or cheap? You know anybody who can network eight Connection Machines and debug two million lines of code for what I bid for this job? 'Cause if he can, I'd love to see him try.
HAMMOND: I'm sorry about your financial problems. I really am. But they are your problems.
Now, he does mention that he bid that price, so maybe he was in on the scheme from the get-go. But that, again, would be more difficult if you have loyal and better paid employees.
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Consistent electricity is a completely unreasonable design assumption for that part of the world. Even backups aren't enough. Zoos already have enclosures that don't require electricity to keep animals contained.
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Yeah, I totally misspoke in my comment. By "backup", I didn't mean e.g. a backup generator. I meant that in addition to the electric fences, there should be physical barriers like a tall, steep wall that can, at minimum, reliably hold the dinosaurs regardless of the fence. We see these in the movie, but I think the idea is that they aren't used consistently. It's been a while since I've watched Jurassic Park.
The electric fences are seemingly a 100% foolproof way of keeping the dinosaurs in while the electricity is running, and I'll even take Hammond at his word that he can have perfect uptime without planned human interference like Nedry's. So in that sense, the fences are more like a backup to the physical barriers, not vice-versa.
So you want (from inside–out):
- Static physical barriers like water, tall walls, etc.
- An electric fence. Even if unelectrified, it still offers some small, temporary protection from the smaller dinosaurs, and it's effective at keeping out dinosaurs who somehow get past (1).
- A barrier more effective than the concrete base of the fence seen in the movie so that a visitor can't run up and get electrocuted.
- Periodic shelters throughout the park for some freak accident.
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But it's a bigger observation in the novel.
🫡🥁
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This got me thinking back on reading the book earlier this year. Mr. Arnold really was the super star of the entire operation. Nedry might have been mostly qualified but heavily overworked, and underpaid of his own fault, but everyone would have died and much much sooner if not for Arnold. That man knew all the ins and outs of the entire park, enough to even debug and fix Nedrys code.
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That’s the point, Hammond kept saying “spared no expense!” When in reality he cheaped out on everything from the building contracts to Dennis’ IT contract. He went with the lowest bidder on everything and caused all that death while smiling and pretending to be faultless
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He spared no expense on the public-facing parts of the park. The ice cream, transportation, ways to view the exhibits, etc. Behind the scenes, yeah…overconfidence and arrogance led to cheaping out on critical personnel and infrastructure.
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At one point I discovered a several-million-dollar spectroscope, on loan from a national lab, had been "mounted" in the experiment by stacking it up on some bricks they'd pried out of the path outside. Ah, to be a lab manager again...
Anyways, really smart people can be absolute idiots when it comes to anything outside their field, is what I'm saying. Asking a chemist to put up your cabinets is seldom going to be a good thing for your plates.
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Particularly where security and due diligence are concerned in un-sexy parts of the operation. Crichton actually described very accurately how the structure of the bullshit-and-real-tech combination works in a startup environment, and how it can lead to truly spectacular problems when the two intersect.
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The helicopters were a big point in the book, InGen branded helicopters whisking people around. Even back in the 80s/90s, helicopters were mad expensive but they focused on them because they're visible and cool.
I know some nouveau-riche folks, and they indeed spend their free time looking at private jet catalogs, imagining the trim colors they'll pick out one day when their business can afford the fuel costs. It's the same mindset. Cool toys up front, who cares about business in the back.
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Unless they're theoretical plates
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What was the movie where they couldn’t train astronauts to be miners, so instead they trained miners to be astronauts?
That actually explains a lot about what is going on right now.
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famously, when asked about this nonsense plot, the director said (something along the lines of) "shut the fuck up"
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It's been a while, but I think the space station and shuttle and all the astronauts were killed in the intro, so they really don't have any astronauts ready to go and the thing hits earth in 18 days and the lead driller guy is like "I want to be a difficult asshole so you gotta use my crew or we all die" or something like that
It was contrived, but not unbelievably so. Given that the problem was an asshole being an asshole about it, it's kind of the most believable contrived plot possible.
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Well apart from that making much more sense than vice versa.
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All the budget went to R&D and nothing to security.
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Spared no expense, but the money was badly distributed.
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Dinosaurs are a profit center, fences are a cost center.
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Even crazier still that if it wasn’t for Jurassic Park being so bad with fences, there wouldn’t have been a Jurassic Park.
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But if Jurassic Park had done well, we'd have Jurassic Park!
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Have you ever seen a scientist build a fence, they suck at it.
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"spare no expense" my ass
instead of a property IT team y'all had just one guy!?!
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Contractors, amirite?
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Sparing no expense doesn't seem to get you much these days. SMH
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The way I see it is that organizations have different aptitudes for specific skills, products, services, etc just like people. While making fences might seem easier TO YOU, that doesn't mean it is/was easier FOR THEM under those circumstances.
But also, like others have pointed out much better than I could, the fences failing and the reasons for it are explained in the movie/books and it's kind of part of the reason the story works so well.
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I just wanna know how the T. Rex tore down the fence and walked over the barrier when there was apparently a 70-fucking-foot drop that the Jeep later falls down on the other side of that exact spot in the fence.
55 comments