Well I'm completely jealous of Max and all the wonderful particle options it has but currently I only own Cinema 4D. So here is a attempt where I used the fluid plugin Turbulence FD to drive thinking Particles - not the same version that's in Max then I used Cinema 4D's hair system to render the particles. The hair system allows to render in the millions.
Wow, very nice Josh! And very clever, to use hairs. Thinking like that shows that you don't need Krakatoa. It's all about the artist pushing the mouse, not the tool.