While rewatching the original Jurassic Park film I began thinking about it from a risk management perspective.
When Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler arrive on the island, all is well. The dinosaurs are secured behind fences and John Hammond and his guests, Newman from Seinfeld, and Samuel L. Jackson are all perfectly safe.
Everyone on the island of Isla Nublar was aware the carnivorous beasts on the other side of the fences are lethal threats, but the controls were more than adequate and risk properly estimated. It is common to have an overconfidence bias when we erect fences (they can make us underestimate the actual risk) but I think that confidence was justified.
T-Rex Catastrophe likelihood: extremely unlikely.
At the end of the movie when the remaining characters escape, they are wrong to believe that the park is doomed and it cannot open to the public because of what happened. They have judged the risk based on their perceived risk of the situation and need to do an objective risk assessment with a proper root cause analysis.
If they did they would learn that what ultimately caused the catastrophe was an operational risk – a people risk. Newman from Seinfeld was the root cause. He was responsible for the security systems going down and the animals escaping. Newman.
I believe if they made guest safety their top priority, replaced all the fences and installed a redundant power supply to ensure that the electrified fences stayed powered, and maybe invested in more than two IT staff, and started over* the likelihood of a catastrophe is as equally unlikely as it was before the movie started.
*Well, while you’re at it perhaps don’t use the frog DNA and don’t make those mutating raptors.