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Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 7:32 pm
by stitch626
If they could make a correct movie adaptation of The Lost World, I think I'd see it 20 times in theatres.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:03 pm
by Nickswitz
Was the lost world really that good?

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:06 pm
by stitch626
Book, yes. Movies, not so much.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:32 am
by Uzume
I'd have Jesus teach me how to rope n' ride the dinosaurs. :lol:

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 8:16 pm
by Tsukiyumi
:laughroll:

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:22 pm
by Graham Kennedy
Sionnach Glic wrote:It's much better. The film changed quite a lot. Spoilers below!


Hammond dies. He's eaten by a pack of compsognathus after falling down a hill and breaking leg.
Ian Malcom is nowhere near as annoying as his film counterpart, and dies at the end of the book.
There are a few new characters.
The roles of the kids are swapped.
The raptors are far more dangerous and far smarter, and pull off some pretty impressive feats.
There's an entirely new sub-plot involving a freight ship that left the island with some dinosaurs on board.
Muldoon is a complete badass in the book. He complains that Hammond hasn't bought him enough rocket launchers, takes down a T-Rex single handedly, kills half a dozen or so raptors by himself, survives an ambush by raptors and eventualy makes it off Isla Nublar.
The island is carpet-bombed into rubble at the end of the story.
But the military wasn't quick enough, as a number of raptors escape the island and end up in the jungles of South America.
The collapse of the park itself also happens quite differently in the book. It's far more gradual. In the film it's a case of Nedry flipping a switch and all hell breaking loose. In the book it's a case of a number of design and personel fuckups set into motion by Nedry's plotting eventualy doom the park over the course of a couple of days or so.
One of Chricton's big themes is that systems designed to do one thing inevitably end up behaving in ways the designers didn't expect because unanticipated circumstances arise.

For instance, in the book Nedry turns off the internal park fences but not the main fence, and not the raptor pen fences. So although the dinos are free to intermingle, they can't get out to attack the visitor's centre. Power is them restored and all looks good.

Unfortunately, the engineers programmed in a safety feature; if power is lost accidentally and then restored, it restores on the battery backups. The idea being that if the generators have already failed once it's best to be on batteries while engineers check the generators out. But there's no engineers around... and nobody realises what's happened because although it's printed out on a status report, nobody is in a mood to read it. So the park chugs along... until the batteries run flat, and that's what kills ALL the fences.

In the movie they handwave this away with "the restart must have killed all the fences!" and leave it at that. It's a shame, I like Chricton's twisted way of making things go wrong. :)

Interestingly, the second book seems largely about debunking some of the things said in the first. For example they poo-poo the idea of a T Rex only being able to see moving objects and claim it didn't eat anybody because it had only just finished eating the goat so it wasn't hungry.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:32 pm
by Captain Seafort
GrahamKennedy wrote:Interestingly, the second book seems largely about debunking some of the things said in the first. For example they poo-poo the idea of a T Rex only being able to see moving objects and claim it didn't eat anybody because it had only just finished eating the goat so it wasn't hungry.
At least he corrected it rather, than sticking to that disproven nonsense.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:43 pm
by Tyyr
Which was good of him.

One of the big reasons I liked the JP book was the way he had the park fail was incredibly realistic. As an engineer I see systems engineered like that all the time. It requires the people running things be familiar with the system and know how it will behave. If they don't you're fucked.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:45 pm
by stitch626
Captain Seafort wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:Interestingly, the second book seems largely about debunking some of the things said in the first. For example they poo-poo the idea of a T Rex only being able to see moving objects and claim it didn't eat anybody because it had only just finished eating the goat so it wasn't hungry.
At least he corrected it rather, than sticking to that disproven nonsense.
I am curious, how was it disproven (though I agree that it was nonsense)?
One of the big reasons I liked the JP book was the way he had the park fail was incredibly realistic. As an engineer I see systems engineered like that all the time. It requires the people running things be familiar with the system and know how it will behave. If they don't you're f***ed.
Man, now I really need to read these.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:54 pm
by Captain Seafort
stitch626 wrote:I am curious, how was it disproven (though I agree that it was nonsense)?
The fact that Rexes had binocular vision, identified both by the fact that they've got both eyes in the front of the skull, and brain casts that demonstrate that they had the processing power to actually use it. That obviates any chance of them being restricted to movement to pick out an object from the background.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:03 pm
by Mikey
In addition, that idea was never helped by the fact that some relatively common prey animals of the T. Rex had a habit of forming motionless defensive cordons when threatened...
stitch626 wrote:Man, now I really need to read these.
Indeed. The earlier Crichton novels showed one of the greatest degrees of actual scientific thought in fiction since Heinlein. The amount of research he put into Congo, for example, was incredible. I recommend JP, of course, as well as The Amdromeda Strain, Congo, and Sphere (the awful movie version notwithstanding. Ditto for Eaters of the Dead.)

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:04 pm
by stitch626
Captain Seafort wrote:
stitch626 wrote:I am curious, how was it disproven (though I agree that it was nonsense)?
The fact that Rexes had binocular vision, identified both by the fact that they've got both eyes in the front of the skull, and brain casts that demonstrate that they had the processing power to actually use it. That obviates any chance of them being restricted to movement to pick out an object from the background.
Ah ok, thanks.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:40 pm
by Nickswitz
Mikey wrote:Indeed. The earlier Crichton novels showed one of the greatest degrees of actual scientific thought in fiction since Heinlein. The amount of research he put into Congo, for example, was incredible. I recommend JP, of course, as well as The Amdromeda Strain, Congo, and Sphere (the awful movie version notwithstanding. Ditto for Eaters of the Dead.)
Andromeda Strain as well as Sphere were both excellent books, the movie adaptations were pretty much crap though... The original Andromeda Strain movie, wasn't all that bad.

Sphere, if it weren't supposed to be based on the book would have been fine to watch, but having first read the book, then saw the movie, it sucked horrifically.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:31 pm
by Sionnach Glic
GrahamKennedy wrote: For instance, in the book Nedry turns off the internal park fences but not the main fence, and not the raptor pen fences. So although the dinos are free to intermingle, they can't get out to attack the visitor's centre. Power is them restored and all looks good.

Unfortunately, the engineers programmed in a safety feature; if power is lost accidentally and then restored, it restores on the battery backups. The idea being that if the generators have already failed once it's best to be on batteries while engineers check the generators out. But there's no engineers around... and nobody realises what's happened because although it's printed out on a status report, nobody is in a mood to read it. So the park chugs along... until the batteries run flat, and that's what kills ALL the fences.
Aye, that was one of the things I loved about the book. The collapse happens in a way that seems realistic and quite possible. Well, to someone with no engineering experience like myself, at least. Most of the problems stemmed from people....just being people. Not checking reports too thoroughly, getting a sort of tunnel-vision where they only focus on the main problem at hand, cost-cutting problems, etc.
And even once the fences all go down, it's still not a case of all hope being lost. Muldoon and Co succeed in taking out most of the Raptors and downing the Tyranosaur. Most of the people wind up taking refuge in the Visitor's Centre which manages to hold out. The military swiftly responds and turns up in less than a day to re-establish control over the island. Hell, even Hammond's gardener is back out working towards the end of the book.

In the film it's a case of the dinosaurs getting loose and pretty much being unstoppable. In the book it's more a case of the dinosaurs gradualy getting loose as control is lost over various parts of the park and unexpected circumstances keep making things worse, but eventualy order is more or less restored.

It still didn't make Ian Malcom's constant smug any more sufferable. Though at least he wasn't the infuriating tree-hugger like he was in the movie.
GrahamKennedy wrote:Interestingly, the second book seems largely about debunking some of the things said in the first. For example they poo-poo the idea of a T Rex only being able to see moving objects and claim it didn't eat anybody because it had only just finished eating the goat so it wasn't hungry.
Ha, I remember that part. The "expert" warns the others to all stand still so they won't be seen, and is promptly eaten.

Re: How would you survive a Jurassic Park?

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:01 am
by Monroe
The new Ice Age movie makes fun of that, according to the preview. The T-Rex walks by a herd of various Ice Age creatures and the main Mammoth guy tells everyone not to move. No sooner does he say that does one of the herbivores come running across the screen screaming :D causing the T-Rex to turn on the mammals.

Apparently there was a lost world under a large chunk of ice. Which hides dinosaurs. Somehow.