It's not about dinosaurs or fences, the whole story is about the danger of underpaying your IT guy.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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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.
And even if he didn't go rogue, there is always bus factor to consider. How many people can get hit by a bus before your company breaks down? For a scary amount of companies, the number is exactly one because there is always that one expert who knows stuff that nobody else does.
I've worked at a company like that and the important person wanted to pay rise, and the company wouldn't give it to him so he quit. Management are idiots
But there were two IT guys…
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.
Or a second person, because sabotage is less likely with more people and the park wouldn't be running on spaghetti code.
Was that a fat joke?!??!!!
Ooooh good point.
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.
Maybe the whole system of getting a bunch of bids and just going with the cheapest bid is fucking stupid in the first place. And the whole treating those who should be partners instead as adversaries where you each try to outmaneuver the other might get in the way of building a reliable system.
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.
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.
Yeah but systems have to be resilient. The events of the movie (haven't read the book) show that a single point of failure was enough to cause a catastrophe. That's unacceptable in normal circumstances, nevermind an island filled with dangerous predators.
I highly recommend reading the book. It's a great read, more gritty, goes into more detail in many ways, has more focus on corporations being a plague on modern world (very much cyberpunk-adjacent themes), and the best thing is that some (but not all) characters that survived the movie die in the book and vice versa, so it's still very suspenseful even if you've seen the movie a million times.
The second one is a good read too.
Yep and dangerous predators that we aren't equipped to deal with. If a lion escapes from the zoo, guns will work on it. Will they penetrate a dinosaurs skin?
Dinosaurs weren’t made of Kevlar.
Yes, from basic science?
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.
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.
But it's a bigger observation in the novel.
🫡🥁
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.
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
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.
Yep, it's more obvious in the book where he's pretty much a straight up villain.
The book handles him much better than the movie but I suppose in a blockbuster it’s harder to show the seemingly sweet old man’s monstrous hubris
Especially if you cast someone like Richard Attenborough. It's pretty obvious that Spielberg was more intent at showing Hammond as a dreamer that is being desillusioned by reality than a capitalist cutting corners and paying the prize.
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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.
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.
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.
Unless they're theoretical plates
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.
Armageddon.
Aerosmith playing in the background
While the singer's elfin daughter gets fucked by Ben Affleck
famously, when asked about this nonsense plot, the director said (something along the lines of) "shut the fuck up"
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.
Yeah because there's only like five astronauts in existence and they're all on the international space station all of the time.
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All the budget went to R&D and nothing to security.
Spared no expense, but the money was badly distributed.
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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Fences don't make money.
Something tells me they do, actually, especially if you're an early adapter into being a fence maker. The amount of fencing that's used in so many different locales is kinda crazy.
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"spare no expense" my ass
instead of a property IT team y'all had just one guy!?!
Have you ever seen a scientist build a fence, they suck at it.
Contractors, amirite?
Sparing no expense doesn't seem to get you much these days. SMH
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.
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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