If the T-virus was released in a single lab, why did the Red Queen seal up the entire complex and kill everyone in it, instead of closing off that one area?
The T-virus got into the ventilation system. It's likely even the Red Queen couldn't predict how far it would spread and considered quarantining the entire Hive as the safer option.
If concentrated T-Virus is so transmissible that a biosafety suit is needed to work with it, why doesn't the laboratory have a separate air circulation system?
The answer to both of the above is that It's Umbrella. Apparently someone in the company's management refuses to believe in OH&S and makes sure no inspectors come to point out these flaws. In the entire game series, every Outbreak involving Umbrella's facilities are complete accidents that could have been very easily avoided; the movie series takes a little bit of that into account.
The "It's Umbrella" handwave doesn't quite work here because the virus in the games wasn't airborne, while in the movie it is. Just for the sake of saving money on training replacement personnel, you'd think they'd have some sort of quarantine procedure for shit like that.
To be fair the AI logic wasn't great either, it is shown at the crux point of the movie that they were ACTIVELY making a cure for inital infection stage T-virus, and it works, if the RQ had any sense of actual logic, it would have locked down the place yes, but then informed the staff that an outbreak may have occoured and to go get shot up with the cure, or at least inform the head supervisors of the hive to round everyone up for the cure. it goes against logic to do "lets kill everyone infected as they will turn anyway and possibly get out if anyone does exactly what happened in the movies.
There is a possibility that Umbrella didn't know the T-virus could transfer to aerial infection at that point in time - the experiments are still being done on it. But any lab that requires safety suits would also have its own separate air system - so perhaps the whole corporation was run by stupid rich billionaires who wanted to develop this technology but didn't follow the proper safety protocol.
Rain says she has a single cartridge left in the chamber of her pistol and an extra mag. So why not drop the empty mag now and not worry about fumbling a reload later?
After most of the team was killed in the Red Queen's Laser Hallway, why didn't Alice and Spence pick up their weapons and ammunition?
The laser hallway cuts through steel like butter (note the leader's knife). Most of the equipment was probably destroyed when it did the final grid sequence.
At the point in time when they make their way back, they don't know about the zombies. So in an underground bunker that appears to be deserted - they see no need in picking up the weapons. On a more human level, they possibly didn't like the idea of raiding corpses for weapons they don't think they'll need. When they return to the Queen's chamber, all the bodies have vanished along with their weapons (unless the weapons were there and they did take them without saying anything).
The funny part is, they apparently brought a bag of weapons with them that everyone forgot about in The Final Chapter, Alice finds the bag, just in the corner of the control room, it has explosives, and automatic weapons in it. Perhaps Kaplan and Rain simply forgot due to the stress of the situation.
The lazers?
Another question related to the Laser Hallway... Why doesn't the Red Queen just use the grid configuration immediately? What was the point of the avoidable lasers?
Can't they just shoot the lasing equipment to shut it down?
Way to go, Umbrella
For the first movie, why the hell did they build their vast testing facilities underneath Raccoon City? What was the point? If they wanted to keep it relatively close to Raccoon City (for unknown reasons), wouldn't it have been far safer and more economical to build twenty or thirty miles away? Were they actively trying to set everything up so that if a virus got out, it would be in the best possible position to wipe out the country? The only way they could have actually been more idiotic is if they had decided to put testing facilities in D.C and New York.
The only way they could have actually been more idiotic is if they had decided to put testing facilities in D.C and New York. The 4th movie shows they had an even larger facility under Tokyo. So the answer to any question that starts "Could Umbrella be so stupid as to..." is "Yes. Yes they were." I mean, they set up the Hive to have these super awesome viral containment facilities and then forced their way through the defenses TWICE.
What the above troper calls "stupid", I call "deliberate". They planned to spread the T-virus all over the world. It was just some unlucky spanner in the works that the virus got sprung prematurely under Raccoon City, to the point where certain individuals (*cough*Alice*cough*) could withstand and defeat them.
Based on what we hear from the movies, they never had any intention of spreading it across the planet.
Well, now thanks to the last film, we know that is indeed what they planned to do.
Not that I'm defending the first movie, but an underground facility actually makes a lot of sense for a project like that. An underground lab has very few ways in or out, and all of them are completely under Umbrella's control. An above-ground facility would have windows, back doors, etc. Lots more opportunities for someone to sneak in or out, or for a virus to get loose and contaminate the surrounding area. And remember, the ONLY REASON the T-Virus got out in the movie was due to deliberate sabotage. If it hadn't been for that, their security measures would have worked perfectly. So really, Umbrella's real mistake (in the movie continuity at least) was not doing better background checks.
Not OP here, but you're not quite getting the point. The issue isn't with the fact that the facility was underground, it's that it's been built straight underneath a densely populated city. The facility, manufacturing a deadly virus that turns people into zombies, was built underneath a city with a population in the millions. Why not build it a few miles away in the dense, sparsely populated woods and mountain ranges situated around said city?
Because the company came first, and the city came later. Umbrella didn't move into Raccoon City so much as Raccoon City sprung up around Umbrella. It was a company town.
Needless to say, the same can't be said for the various Hives under city capitals, but I think by that point the series was starting to lose its way anyways.
Having the Hive under Raccoon City also makes surveillance easier for Umbrella. The employees will presumably be living in the city because it's closer to where they work, which means the majority of employees they need to keep tabs on are in the one place. Additionally, the mansion seems to be a little outside the city, or at least far away enough from the centre of it - so there's not that big a chance of random passersby happening across the entrance.
Skinned dogs
Why are the zombie dogs in the first movie skinned?
The effects of the T-virus has different effects on different organisms. When the dogs became zombies, they ripped off their skins when they escaped their kennels.
And yet there are no ripped shreds of skin on that kennel Alice saw torn open from inside.
I thought they ripped their skins in the process of forcing themselves through the metal grates...
Could be from spontaneous muscle growth. The virus can do that kind of thing, especially in the games.
Containment plans
In the first movie, who the hell put all the infected in the containment chambers? Everyone in the facility was killed and only the Red Queen was left. Seeing as she's only a computer and there seems to be no automated system that could feasibly collect and store said bodies, what happened?
The creatures sealed up in the containment chambers weren't a result of the outbreak, they were a result of Umbrella's researchers testing out the T-virus to see what it could do. Why do you think the Red Queen knew that eating somebody would upgrade the Licker's hunting abilities?
The Red Queen says the one keeping them contained as well. When her power is cut, the Lickers get released from the containment chambers.
The (Red) Queen's Priorities:
In the first film, when the T-Virus was unleashed in the Hive, why didn't the Red Queen simply alert the facility about the outbreak, put all the employees in quarantine, and ensure the distribution the anti-virus to all those infected, instead of just killing everybody altogether? And why didn't she alert Umbrella about the outbreak during that time, or even tell the Sanitation team and others what had happened when they first entered the Hive up until they reached her chamber?
Perhaps the Queen wasn't programmed for that. Umbrella may have programmed her just to run the facility, with lockdown as a worse cast scenario. The team aren't informed about what's happened because it involves information that they don't have the rank or security clearance to know about (and she only tells them once it's obvious their lives are in danger and they need to know what they're fighting). And isn't Kaplan's mission to go in and get her circuit board/hard drive, which presumably would have the information regarding why the Hive was locked down?
Doesn't the Red Queen start explaining to the team what shutting her down would result in? Then when Kaplan refuses to listen to her, she warns that they'll die down here, and he still doesn't listen. Then she's shut down and thus can't say anymore. If she'd said, 'the corpses down here are all renanimated and are going to eat you', he wouldn't believe her. Alice actually seems to guess this when she opts to restart the Queen and find out more.
The Red Queen is also very clear that there is no hope of her potentially letting the T-virus escape the Hive. She won't let them leave without killing Rain, and she says that the Anti-Virus is unpredictable. Indeed, Rain was injected with it and still became a zombie. Since it hasn't been mass marketed yet, it's clearly still a prototype (notably it's the second film that makes it a reliable cure) and you don't want to give an untested prototype cure to several hundred people. So the Queen's solution was the callous one - no one infected can leave the facility because that's the only way to stop the virus from spreading.
Labtech Zombie:
In the first movie the first zombie they ever see is a lab tech, but in the beginning we see that exact same person in the elevator, how did she get out of there and all the way to Licker storage, if everything was locked down?
Five hours pass between the lockdown and the team opening things up. If those elevator doors remain open then perhaps she crawled out that way and ended up near enough the Dining Hall - only to be fully released when the Red Queen's power was shut down and the doors unlocked.
