A few weeks ago, I watched ‘Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock,’ a short film that gives us a glimpse at how humans and dinosaurs are interacting in the wake of ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s ending.

Having been given a taste of what the third Jurassic World film might be like, I tried to imagine how things could get worse from this point out. Currently there are five concrete facts known about ‘Jurassic World 3’s story:

1. Claire, Owen, and Maisie will be back.

2. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcom are coming back as well.

3. The story will take place around the globe.

4. Dinosaurs being created, sold, and spread around the world.

5. It will not be about a world war between dinosaurs and humans.

Despite the last fact being confirmed, I’m guessing that there will still be a major conflict between humans and dinosaurs, and an inevitable battle to see which species will have the privilege of survival. There is, however, one huge problem with this plot: At the end of ‘Fallen Kingdom,’ approximately 67 dinosaurs escaped into the wild. ‘Battle at Big Rock’ tells us that:

*The dinosaurs have been in the wild for a year.

*Their presence is known to the public at large.

*People are willing to go camping with their families when giant carnivores are running around (?!).

With that in mind, there’s one important question that must be answered: Why haven’t the dinosaurs been killed yet? From a public safety standpoint, these dinosaurs are an invasive species and a massive menace to public health. It’s only logical that authorities would want to take these creatures out as quickly as possible to ensure public safety. But why haven’t they? Five possibilities come to mind:

1. Authorities have not gone after the dinosaurs.

2. Authorities are hunting them down, but are having a difficult time locating them.

3. The dinosaurs have been tagged and are allowed to roam free within a limited area.

4. Shady individuals are bribing/threatening government officials to let the dinosaurs run free.

5. The public wants the dinosaurs to run free.

The first option is highly unlikely: whenever a bear or other dangerous animal is loose near communities, it’s quickly hunted down. If there was, say, an allosaurus or a tyrannosaurus rex stomping around a national park or suburban community, they’d be hunted down as quickly as possible, and if the authorities were slow to do so, then mobs of armed civilians would take up the task, not wanting their children or loved ones to become Purina Dinosaur Chow.

The second option is more reasonable, but still unlikely. We have technology and weapons that not only allow us to kill any dinosaur we come across, but to also track them down; finding the heat signature of a T-Rex or Triceratops with infrared cameras on a helicopter would be a relatively simple matter (though it’d be more difficult to track smaller dinosaurs, like the compies, and finding that mosasaur and the pteradactals would be neigh-impossible considering they could be swimming and flying anywhere on Earth), and military-grade weapons would make short work of even the thickest dinosaur hide. An ankylosaurus might be among the most heavily armored dinosaurs, but I doubt it would survive a rocket to the face.

The third option is the most likely, but is not without its flaws: as noted earlier, dinosaurs are an invasive species, and while a plant eater might be allowed to walk about freely with a tracking beacon, a house-sized carnivore who needs to eat hundreds of pounds of meat a day would still be a massive public safety hazard, and would be tracked down as quickly as possible and shot.

The fourth option, as silly as it sounds, could be at play in some areas: In this day and age, corruption runs rampant in governments, and the thought of shady companies/organizations who want the dinosaurs to survive for whatever reason would deploy threats or bribes to force various officials to look the other way. The problem with this, though, is that the inevitable public backlash against prehistoric carnivores running free would eventually become too great for even bribed officials to ignore; history shows that, when the public demands something for long enough, and loudly enough, governments eventually cave, no matter how corrupt they are.

The fifth and final option has people wanting the dinosaurs to roam wild and free and sing songs in the sun all day long… which means it’s probably environmentalists, hippies, and children who would take this option. But the problem is that they’re likely to be a minority, with the majority of people wanting their families and children to stay safe from murdersauruses running about in the woods.

With all that said, which option is the most likely one? While we’ll have to wait until 2021 to find out, I’m guessing the answer is a mix of 3 and 4 with a sprinkle of 5 thrown in: The authorities are going after the dinosaurs, but because of public affection for the beasts, authorities have decided to tag and track the herbivores, allowing them to roam free while warning the public that they may encounter said beasts in the wild. But while the authorities go after carnivores, the beasts somehow manage to escape capture, thanks to people who want them to be free, such as Eco-terrorists who work to remove tracking chips, or threaten people who try to tag said carnivores.

Of course, this is all speculation. I could be wrong on all of these, or may have just correctly guessed how things are going in the ‘Jurassic’ universe. But this scenario does provide a valuable lesson for writers of speculative fiction where unusual animals are released into the present day: There needs to be a very good reason why they aren’t wiped out quickly by humanity and our drones, guns, helicopters, tanks, and the like. Perhaps the animals are shapeshifters, or perhaps they reproduce at an astonishing rate, or have hides that are almost impervious to our weaponry. Simply having them run free without a good explanation of how they survive won’t work in our modern era; going back to the 6osih dinosaurs now roaming the wild, we have to contend that they face 7 and a half billion people, billions of guns, and every military on earth. To survive, each dinosaur – including the compies – must kill approximately 124,758,064 people to win the inevitable dinosaur war. Coupled with the fact that we have helicopters, heat-seeking missiles, high-caliber weapons, and an unmatched talent for wiping out entire species when we put our hearts and minds to it, the logical outcome of such a war is that the dinosaurs are slaughtered within a week or two, with only the compies surviving and thriving due to their small size, speed, ability to hide almost anywhere, and (presumably) fast reproduction speed.

The bottom line? Before we release animals into the wider world in our stories, it’s always a good idea to sit down, take a few minutes, and figure why they’re not blown to kingdom come by the most bloodthirsty species on the planet – us.