| Dinosaurs Parks > Fictional Dinosaur Parks > Dinosaur Park Tips |
Planning a dinosaur park? We all know from movies that even a minor problem can cause a major catastrophe in a badly designed dinosaur park... and, before you know it, the dinosaurs are chowing down on park staff and guests alike! But it doesn't have to be that way... here are some tips that can help secure your dinosaur park:
Park Design Tips:
- Do not make your dinosaur enclosures of flimsy electrified wire that are totally ineffective if the power goes off...
- ...but have a backup power generator anyway!
- Use a system of concentric enclosures. In prisons, if a prisoner manages to break out of his cell, he doesn't
immediately get the
run of the whole prison, because each section and cellblock within the prison is separated by walls, locked gates, etc.
When designing your dinosaur park, you can use the same principle.
- For emergencies, build a really secure redoubt with ultra-thick high concrete walls...
- ...and steel doors only big enough for humans to fit through
(so any passing
Tyrannosaurus rex
can't get in)...
- ...but with the doors arranged one after another in an airlock-like arrangement with a door locking/unlocking mechanism that can only be operated by humans (not by velociraptors simply leaning on the door handle). For example, have people punch in a short numeric code to open the door - and to avoid any possibility of people forgetting the code, the code can even be printed on the door - since velociraptors can't actually read.
- Don't allow one angry programmer with a bad attitude and financial problems to design all your automated computer
control systems. Even if he made the lowest bid for the contract. It's a false economy, especially
when you consider that you've probably spent billions on buying islands, building infrastructure, doing scientific
research, and dinosaur breeding.
- Buy more than one computer... you don't want parts of your computer control system shutting down because you're
compiling new versions of the control software! Actually why not buy at least three computers - one for development and
compiling, one for testing, and one for the live system - that way if a programmer introduces a bug (either deliberately
or maliciously), the worst that he's done is messed up your development or testing system - no dinosaurs have escaped
- and no awkward letters of apologies to write to your guests' relatives!
- Have a quality assurance group, separate from your programmers, perform testing on the test system, before deciding whether to deploy new versions of the software on your real system. You should also have independent experts regularly audit what the computer programmers are doing, and the security of your systems.
- Breeding dinosaurs of only one gender is a good idea - BUT - do not use frog DNA (or any other animal which may be prone to changing sex) to fill in gaps in your dinosaur DNA. Birds (which are descended from dinosaurs) and crocodilians (dinosaur "cousins" - apart from birds, the only surviving members of the archosaurs) are more closely related anyway.
- Don't just assume a disaster probably won't happen - and that you can improvise if it does. Have a contingency plan and train all your staff in it. That way everybody knows their way to the redoubt, where the emergency caches of automatic weapons are stored, and the dinosaur-proof armored-vehicles are always fully fueled and ready to roll.
Fictional Dinosaur Parks
Books
DVDs
Software
Videos (VHS)
Tips
Real Dinosaur Parks
UK:
Combe Martin Wildlife & Dinosaur Park
Dinosaur Adventure Park
Dinosaur Court
Dinosaur Isle
Dinosaur Park Tenby
Miniatura Park
USA:
American Museum of Natural History
Dinosaur National Monument
Dinosaur Park
Dinosaur World, Florida
Dinosaur World, Kentucky
Dinosaur World, Texas
Field Museum of Natural History
Museum of the Rockies
Natural History Museum of LA County
Dinosaur Shopping:
Dinosaur Books
Dinosaur Clothes
Dinosaur Computer Games
Dinosaur DVDs
Dinosaur Toys
Dinosaur Videos
(VHS)
Dinosaur Web Sites:
Dinosaur Jungle
Dinosaurs News
Other Science Fun:
Super Science Projects
24 Hour Science