Sig Sauer 716i "Triassic"

WORK IN PROGRESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

In 2022 Dennis Newman accepted a job as head of security at the then secret Triassic Park, the previous head of security had been fired following a fatal incident involving hungry dinosaurs and firearms, the details of which were covered up and remain obscure. What we do know is that Newman considered the weapons used by the security staff to be totally inappropriate, they were equipped with a curious hodgepodge of weapons such as 12 gauge slug guns, 45ACP Glocks, CZ550's chambered in .505 Gibbs, AR-15's chambered in .458 SOCOM and a pair of Barrett M82's.

Newman had to equip the team with something better and he was under tremendous pressure to do it quickly under difficult circumstances, the world was facing a supply chain crisis which hit the gun industry particularly hard and the joint agreement between the US and Costa Rican Governments required that the park be compliant with all US Federal gun laws so post-1986 full auto, high explosives and tungsten bullets were off the table. Given the tight time frame he essentially needed something as "off the shelf" as possible, he faced the seemingly impossible task of finding a common style of weapon with commonly available ammunition which was appropriate for both large and small dinosaurs within a reasonable envelope of size and weight.

The arsenal Newman inherited was a unscientific gun enthusiast's idea of what kind of weapons would effectively stop charging dinosaurs but Newman was far more pragmatic. He started by considering what cartridge/bullet combos were considered appropriate for use against African big game such as elephants and use that as a baseline for the kind of penetration he wanted. At the time the most common cartridges used to hunt elephants were a .375H&H or .375 Ruger pushing a 300grain solid copper flat nosed bullet to a velocity of 2,550 feet per second, such a round would penetrate the front of the skull and then typically comes to rest about eight feet inside the elephant. As the Tyrannosaurs Rex, the largest carnivore in Triassic Park weighed an entire metric ton more than an African bull elephant he considered any less penetration to be unacceptable.

Remembering the exploits of ivory hunter and gun writer W. D. M. Bell who typically hunted elephants with a 7mm Mauser, Newman considered if smaller cartridges which could be chambered in a semi-automatic rifle could provide him with the penetration he needed. He found a solution on the website of the website of Cutting Edge Bullets who manufactured a 155 grain flat nosed copper safari style bullet (SKU#: DGSC G155) in .264 caliber (6.5mm). He calculated that such a bullet could be loaded in the common 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge to a velocity of 2,600fps from a 22" barrel, a flat nosed .264 bullet has a frontal surface area of 0.054739 inches while an identical bullet in .375 has a frontal surface area of 0.110447 inches, in other words this loading would not only have a slightly higher velocity than the legendary .375 H&H but a lightly higher sectional density as well. Importantly, 6.5 Creedmoor factory rifles featured a 1 in 8 twist rate so there was no question that this bullet would remain both aerodynamically and hydrodynamically stable on its way to the dinosaur's vital organs.

Over 50 22" AR-10's of similar configuration were procured by one of Triassic Park's many front companies via a licensed dealer from various manufacturers while a large amount of mass produced hunting ammo and various LPVO style scopes along other gun accessories were purchased online. It was now up to Newman to find an ammo manufacturer who was willing to load 10,000 of his 155gr flat nosed bullets into 6.5CM within the desired time frame, he found a company with the capacity but unfortunately gave them the impression he was a lunatic. With Triassic Park still secret they wondered what the hell this bizarre ammo might be for and asked him if he realized that most African countries require a minimum of .375 caliber rifles for big game hunting? Newman, in a panic claimed to be a marine biologist who needed them to euthanize beached whales with a machinegun, his unconvincing lie seriously turned them off and they insisted he pay for everything up front; which he did.

This load was only to be used against the larger dinosaurs as against smaller ones it would just zip right through and do little damage. Once again Newman considered typical hunting practices, 6.5x55 Swedish was very similar to 6.5CM and was the most common cartridge used for hunting mooses in Scandinavia. Mooses in Scandinavia weigh up to 2,000 pounds, staff were thus trained to use mass produced hunting bullets against dinosaurs weighing less than that number and use the special flat nosed load against dinosaurs weighing more than that number, typically they were issued with six 25 round polymer magazines containing 75 rounds of each type.

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