26 - A Moment Of Clarity In The Eye Of The Storm

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Bob Peck in his role as Robert Muldoon in Jurassic Park (1993).

In his military life, and later on as part of his experience with big African game, Robert Muldoon had spent a long time in the company of death.

The death of Morales, as such, didn’t represent a huge shock to Muldoon, the way it did with the other leading figures of Jurassic Park at the time. It was a familiar sight.

The big boom experienced by safari hunting ever since the 1970s had led to a host of newly-minted tourist hunters. (1) Muldoon had lost count of how many had gotten themselves killed in stupid, reckless ways.

Encounters with poachers could sometimes get serious and very deadly. And of course, even poachers sometimes got reckless or made mistakes, paying the price to the quarry they were chasing.

It was a simple fact of life.

The raptor incident disturbed and upset Muldoon for very different reasons. Having to essentially invent the profession from scratch was daunting enough. But now, it was no longer a theory.

There was empirical, unequivocal proof that these animals could, under the wrong circumstances, get lethally violent. The Dakotaraptors were still maturing, and were the smallest animal to be featured on Isla Nublar to date.

The idea of having to potentially stop a charging, adult Tyrannosaurus rex or a raging Triceratops in the future filled Muldoon with a sense of foreboding. Ankylosaurus body armour required serious consideration as to the stopping power and penetration necessary to deal with a rampaging individual.

Worst of all were the sauropods, of course. They were still babies, but their growth rate was the fastest of the animals present on Nublar. (2) In adulthood, each would weigh like an entire herd of elephants, or more.

And InGen had cloned dozens of them.

Besides the sheer enormity of their body mass, the height of the head above ground also made it harder to deal with a hypothetically rampaging sauropod by aiming for obviously vulnerable vitals.

Muldoon had plenty of experience with raging African elephant bulls. He had no desire to be caught unprepared in the event that adult sauropods exhibited similarly violent behaviour for whatever reason. And he was well aware that a mere elephant gun wouldn’t cut it.

This was ultimately why, as the meetings with Hammond got underway to finalise a weapons procurement list for Jurassic Park, Muldoon insisted on the rocket launchers. Their primary benefit, in his view, was the diminished importance of shot placement - they were pretty much guaranteed to have an effect regardless of where they hit.

With an as-yet untrained crew, that might well prove the difference between life and death in a chaotic situation.

Hammond was still appalled, but knew he needed to play ball to some degree if he wanted to keep his chief warden. Eventually, he agreed to the procurement of rocket launchers, on a few conditions.

The systems would only be purchased in limited numbers, with limited amounts of ammunition, and be kept in a purposefully-built armoury, to which only Hammond and Muldoon themselves would have the key.

Undeterred by his boss’ attempt to rein in his requests, Muldoon pressed further. He’d made inquiries, and there seemed to be issues in regards to securing machine guns in the numbers he felt were needed.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Fortunately, Muldoon believed he had a solution. He’d identified a relatively new arms manufacturer, Barrett Firearms, which had only a few years prior unveiled a .50 calibre rifle. (3)

The manufacturer had as of yet failed to secure a government contract, and was happy for sales opportunities for its M82 rifle - which, most interestingly from Muldoon’s perspective, also included a bullpup variant, designated M82A2, which could be fired from the shoulder. (4)

It was, in his view, Jurassic Park’s version of an elephant gun - a sauropod gun, so to speak. Perhaps more importantly, it would raise far fewer alarms than a genetics company attempting to purchase large quantities of machine guns for an ostensible tourist resort in the tropics.

The same reasons of expediency, unfortunately, prevented Muldoon from acquiring even more exotic weapons systems, which he however believed would prove necessary.

In particular, he impressed upon Hammond the consideration that once the park opened and became famous worldwide, weapons procurement would become easier, as the motive for it would be clear. In turn however, the animals would become larger and their number would only keep growing.

Already Muldoon was envisioning the usage of anti-aircraft guns as improvised sauropod guns, in case the M82 rifles proved insufficient or a catastrophic situation led to a herd rampage rather than issues with a single individual.

Moreover, Muldoon wanted Jurassic Park to have a small complement of tanks, singling out the French AMX-13 light tank as an ideal choice. While seemingly outlandish, there was a solid rationale behind it.

Light tanks, after all, could move relatively competently across even rough and uneven terrain, while still maintaining crew protection and - of course - sporting a 75mm gun that should cover any and all eventualities.

These would merely supplement the more standard fare of zoo and safari vehicles, but might well make the difference in an emergency.

Hammond by all accounts was left completely stone-faced at the idea of equipping Isla Nublar with light tanks and anti-aircraft guns. But he had the wisdom to not press the issue for the time being, in the full knowledge that the issue would only become pressing after the opening of the park.

And that, in itself, was far from a preordained conclusion at the time. The new portfolio of purchased weapons would help add credibility to the operation, but Hammond was still awaiting a response from the lawyers representing Jurassic Park’s financial backers.

He had little doubt the lawyers would issue a specific set of demands in order to be reassured about the safety and viability of Jurassic Park.

And very soon, he would hear from them.

Footnotes:

(1) An OTL phenomenon. It was very much still in full swing in the 1980s, so would be ongoing by this time in the story.

(2) Sauropod growth rates were frankly insane, but it’s understandable and to a degree even obvious from an evolutionary perspective. Not only do they have the largest size of all to reach, but it’s probably the single most determining factor in their survival to predation - past a certain size, they become virtually unassailable. This probably greatly favoured the individuals with the faster growth rates, and in turn, their offspring. It also means, by implication, that we should envision a population pyramid with relatively few adult sauropods, and much more common juvenile individuals.

(3) I want to thank the users who engaged in a very productive discussion about the matter with me, and particularly RavenVrake on Spacebattles, who brought the M82 rifle to my attention - inadvertedly providing me with exactly what I’d been looking for in terms of Jurassic Park security systems.

(4) IOTL, Barrets achieved their first government contract in 1989 with Sweden, and then their big break came with the US utilising the weapon in Desert Storm thereafter. At the time of the Morales incident, however, neither event has taken place yet, which helps InGen sign a lucrative deal with the manufacturer without pinging too hard on anybody’s radar.