My favorite moment in the book is where they realize that the computer program for tracking populations had an incorrect assumption and just returned the full count if it counted the expected population for an enclosure. Only, the dinosaurs were breeding, so the system didn't catch that the populations were actually higher than expected, and therefore didn't notice when some dinosaurs escaped from their enclosures.

I didn't get what chaos theory was until like 10-20 years later, but to my 12-year-old self it was the first time I learned about how bad assumptions can cascade in real world failures.

Would dinosaurs even get prion disease? I think birds don't.

here to recommend Dinosaur Sanctuary .

About a dinosaur zoo, and they do all that stuff properly.

it's cowriten by a paleontologist, and they treat them as animals not movie monsters.

Was always why I loved the books so much, every single step highlights poor management and going cheap for profit sake after having invested so much money in the cloning technology.

It’s like buying a brand new super car and then throwing the cheapest used tires you can find on it.

Dr. Wu tries to push Hammond to use slower, calmer, easier to contain dna modifications but Hammond ignores him, Wu can’t quit cause he was sniped as a post-doctorate and can’t publish any of his work so every employer would see a worthless resume

Muldoon demanded better weapons to handle the dinosaurs if something happened, Hammond doesn’t let him have anything more than a single tranq firing rocket launcher because “he doesn’t want the dinosaurs to be hurt”

Nedry was the lowest bidder but then they refused to give him good specifications and requirements “due to secrecy” so of course the code had bugs, which he was not supposed to be on the hook to fix for free, but Hammond went and slandered him to all of his other and future customers, basically blackmailing him till he came and did a ton of free labor.

Dr. Harding, the only veterinarian, (who also was the father of Sarah Harding in Lost World), wasn’t allowed to dissect any of the animals to study their physiology, so when they tried to sterilize them with radiation they had to guess where the reproductive organs were.

John Arnold (hold onto your butts) was overworked and the only person who know how to use the systems, creating a single point of failure. He also was ignored when he insisted that the park needed more testing before they open the park but was ignored by Hammond, because it would take too much time. He also said they relied too much on automation, but was ignored due to costs and cool new tech.

Hammond was an asshole who portrays the typical tech bro attitude even though he’s an old man. He was mostly a fundraiser not the brains behind the project. His former partner who was the genius behind the cloning tech (and Wu’s former teacher) died of cancer. But even during the fundraising he was a total fraud, they had made a pigmy elephant and used it as a demonstration of the cloning tech, but it actually wasn’t a clone or any dna modifications that made it. And on top of that it had a shitty temperament and would get sick if people touched it. Dude was a total snake the entire time. And he ultimately dies at the end by a bunch of Compys after the park has been mostly restored.

Also, the book makes it clear that Nedry isn't just some greedy asshole, he's someone getting screwed over and financially ruined. Hammond hired him as the lowest bid for the job of setting up the systems, with a contract that explicitly stated that support was not included, only for Hammond to threaten to sue him until he goes broke and ruin his reputation so no one else will hire him unless he provides free support. He's being dragged to the island and working around the clock and he's not even getting paid for it. Of course he's going to take the opportunity to get paid for screwing over Hammond.

I’d never considered how much this applies to the general “tech bro” mindset beyond the chaos theory parts of the book

They had hundreds of animals and no staff ecologists. They had 1 veterinarian. Instead of having paleontologists on staff, they had a big game hunter. All their biologists worked in the lab. They built everything like theme park rides because automation kept labour costs down and made secrecy easier.

Me screaming about urban park design to no one in particular.

To be fair, standards for zoos were also quite a bit lower thirty years ago.

I have always hated the "mr. DNA" cartoon. Because everything in that "ride" is just a flattened exposition dump / cheap setup for what was a revelation or twist in the book.

So basically it's the dinosaur king

Let's never go back to Dinosaur Island.