Situation Reversal (Alien/The Thing)

[CaptHawkeye]

This scenario is presented based upon alternate universe force subs. Using the Thing/Alien universes and their respective antagonists, and switching them.

A. Instead of a facehugger attacking Kane, he is instead attacked and killed by the Thing which physically assumes his form just before Dallas can find him. Also, Ash is still attempting to physically protect the "Thing Specimen" in the same way he was secretly protecting the Xenomorph. Weyland-Yutani wants it.

B. The dog that reached the American Research Base is no longer a Thing, but was recently attacked and infected by a facehugger.

These situations are similar in that the characters of both scenarios are armed with few weapons, are locked in tight quarters, and are unaware of the SERIOUS shit that is about to befall them. The question is, what happens? Does the crew of the Nostromo fair better with ThingKane on board, or is their situation worse? Is the Artic Research Outpost better off facing a Xenomorph or are they just as fucked as they were with the Thing? How does the "unveiling" of the Xenomorph/Thing change? How do the environments impact the danger of the The Thing or the Xenomorph this time around? Do they aid or hinder the character's survivability compared to this different enemy?

[18-Till-I-Die]

McReady and the dudes at the outpost will fare better, IMO. Aliens are badass, but bullets make them dead like everyone else, as does fire. The outpost dudes have shotguns (IIRC) and flamethrowers. Crispy Xenos.

Ripley may be fucked however, as her crew were largely unarmed civilians and were vastly outclassed by what is basically a big, mean animal. The Thing is, most certainly, far more intelligent (it built a spaceship out of scraps...) and far more deadly than the Alien could ever be, by simple virtue of it's ability to...well to be anyone. Save for Ash who has nothing to take over there is little or no way for them to defend themselves against this thing.


I think the Alien would be dead fairly quickly, especially once the Outpust Dudes figure out it's definitely only one of them. No paranoia, no reasy to splinter apart, all they have to worry about is hunkering down and lighting the fucker up. Ripley and the crew will, instead of one monster, have the threat of some unknown, unknowable number of shapeshifting monsters that could hide literally anywhere. Monsters which require much more punishment to go down than a Xeno.

[hongi]

Completely agree. Nothing more to say than that I feel really sorry for Ripley.

[Molyneux]

McReady and the dudes at the outpost will fare better, IMO. Aliens are badass, but bullets make them dead like everyone else, as does fire. The outpost dudes have shotguns (IIRC) and flamethrowers. Crispy Xenos.

Ripley may be fucked however, as her crew were largely unarmed civilians and were vastly outclassed by what is basically a big, mean animal. The Thing is, most certainly, far more intelligent (it built a spaceship out of scraps...) and far more deadly than the Alien could ever be, by simple virtue of it's ability to...well to be anyone. Save for Ash who has nothing to take over there is little or no way for them to defend themselves against this thing.


I think the Alien would be dead fairly quickly, especially once the Outpust Dudes figure out it's definitely only one of them. No paranoia, no reasy to splinter apart, all they have to worry about is hunkering down and lighting the fucker up. Ripley and the crew will, instead of one monster, have the threat of some unknown, unknowable number of shapeshifting monsters that could hide literally anywhere. Monsters which require much more punishment to go down than a Xeno.

It's easy enough to see why the Xeno is fucked - it's going up against Kurt Russell AND Keith David. That's like one and a half Samuel L. Jacksons!

If Ripley and co. were smart enough to figure out the blood test, they might have had a shot; I doubt that they would have survived, but I'll give them at least a 10% chance of one or more crew members evacuating successfully and blowing up the main ship if they come up with the blood thing early. (Ironically, in the novella, wasn't it implied that the blood test wasn't necessarily accurate?)

Either way, I doubt that Jones is going to make it off alive in this version.

[Shroom Man 777]

She has your sympathies?

Seriously, The Thing is a really nasty piece of work. It's worse than any generic monster, worse than a xenomorph, worse than a zombie plague. If it weren't for the fact that the outbreak happened in Antarctica, the world would have been fucked by the organism - as opposed to the apocalyptic wankery of most zombie-inducing pathogens.

[Yuri2356]

(Ironically, in the novella, wasn't it implied that the blood test wasn't necessarily accurate?)

Sort of. In the original story there were two different blood Tests. The first was a fairly conventional chemical test of some sort, which involved mixing samples of people's blood with those from some test animal and seeing what happened. As I recall, this ended up giving some false negatives. Later on, after they figure out that every peice of a Thing has it's own will to survive (The thing-infected Doctor commits suicide, but then his corpse starts acting up) they use the hot metal test seen in the movie. They also do the rather smart thing of putting the blood in test tubes instead of petri dishes, so that it can't escape from the wire once it starts to panic.

[Molyneux]

She has your sympathies?

Seriously, The Thing is a really nasty piece of work. It's worse than any generic monster, worse than a xenomorph, worse than a zombie plague. If it weren't for the fact that the outbreak happened in Antarctica, the world would have been fucked by the organism - as opposed to the apocalyptic wankery of most zombie-inducing pathogens.

Heck, it was badass enough to serve as a major threat to a galaxy-spanning civilization in Metroid: Fusion...it's come closer than any other critter in the series to killing Samus herself!

Sort of. In the original story there were two different blood Tests. The first was a fairly conventional chemical test of some sort, which involved mixing samples of people's blood with those from some test animal and seeing what happened. As I recall, this ended up giving some false negatives. Later on, after they figure out that every peice of a Thing has it's own will to survive (The thing-infected Doctor commits suicide, but then his corpse starts acting up) they use the hot metal test seen in the movie. They also do the rather smart thing of putting the blood in test tubes instead of petri dishes, so that it can't escape from the wire once it starts to panic.

Ah, thanks. It's been awhile since I read the story.

The scariest thing about the Thing, I think, worse than the nightmarish shapes and the possibility of human extinction, is the possibility that you can be infected and replaced by the Thing and not know about it. They never figured out whether the Thing was mimicking the host's behavior, or whether the mind never realized what was happening until the alien was forced to ditch its disguise...

[Shroom Man 777]

She has your sympathies?

Seriously, The Thing is a really nasty piece of work. It's worse than any generic monster, worse than a xenomorph, worse than a zombie plague. If it weren't for the fact that the outbreak happened in Antarctica, the world would have been fucked by the organism - as opposed to the apocalyptic wankery of most zombie-inducing pathogens.

Heck, it was badass enough to serve as a major threat to a galaxy-spanning civilization in Metroid: Fusion...it's come closer than any other critter in the series to killing Samus herself!

What?

Is the Thing's grotesquetitudes anything remotely like Samus' opponents?

[CaptHawkeye]

I wonder how far the Xeno would get before they caught on? Assuming the chest burster manages to escape I imagine at least one or two of them will get jumped not understand the chest burster gets A LOT bigger.

Ripley and the dudes of Nostromo are worse off than usual it seems. Another problem the Thing poses is that it understand the use of technology. If Ripley tries to blow up the ship, it will probably attempt to stop the self detonation. If it can't do that, it will take the shuttle for itself, since Ripley can't be in two places at once. (Assuming she's the last survivor again.)

I imagine the Thing's ultimate goal will be to take Nostromo for itself.

[Drooling Iguana]

The Alien was dangerous because the crew of the Nostromo was pretty much unarmed and its acid blood would have punctured the hull if they tried to kill it in a conventional way, which would not be an issue on a planetside base like the one in Antarctica. The Xeno in this situation goes down hard.

I'm not sure how the Thing would fare since it's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I'd imagine that it would get to clobberin' the Nostromo crew at least as well as the Xeno did.

[Duckie]

I'm not sure how the Thing would fare since it's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I'd imagine that it would get to clobberin' the Nostromo crew at least as well as the Xeno did.

It can imitate anyone with such greatness that it can probably pass DNA tests to look like its host, and it might even imitate the mind well enough to have the Thing think it's the person it's imitating until it's forced not to.

At very minimum, Thing-infected people were very good at bluffing like they were scared and normal people until they exploded into gore and mandibles. Things are duplicitous enough to sell each other out to gain their way into a group. It's unknown whether a thing knows where all other things are at any given time, but the nature of their organism makes it likely that they have some kind of group mind considering they are an organism that can so easily subdivide and gloop together.

Things can apparently shapechange, keeping the same mass but shifting what they're using it for, as they sprout legs and maws and tentacles and the like when forced out of a human form into fighting.

They are intelligent enough that a human-sized thing knows how to build a working transatmospheric aircraft it was going to use to fly from antarctica to patagonia (referred to in the movie as a spaceship even though it seems more logical it would just want to fly to the rest of the world where there's more biomass) out of scrap metal.

If you sever a thing's arm, it will sprout manipulators and weapons and attack you. And so will the body. Apparently their shapechanging abilities cause even the tiniest bit that flakes off of them to act as an independent organism by changing into a way that makes it still alive (for instance, I imagine that arm would grow neurons in one bit and some organs and legs and so forth at least to a minimum necessary to function).

The only useful shapechanging ability we don't see Things use is that they don't grow poisonous fangs, acidic spitters, bombardier beetle glands, or other complicated organic chemical weapons. But that might just be because it's never seen a bombardier beetles, vipers, or termites before.

The only way to kill a thing is to contain it burn it or, I would figure theoretically (I've never played the games or read the books) use some kind of anti-organic poison. Presumably they're still carbon based so Argon would be deadly to them. Radiation would probably be extremely bad for them too- I'd imagine whatever enables them to shapechange like that would be in every single cell, and it'd thus be small and fragile enough that constant radioactive bombardment might eventually damage it.

To whit- The Nostromo is fucked. The Thing is so overpowered that you actually have to marvel at how ridiculous it is.

[Duckie]

Ghetto Edit- However, it's impossible for the Thing to "Infect" people. It isn't a virus, despite being composed of slightly modified human cells (in its human-imitating forms, that is).

Instead, it apparently must consume you, and utilize its increased mass to subdivide into a human-sized mass of Thing cells which are shaped into a human-imitation.

This is a bit of a fine distinction, but it means that it won't reproduce by biting you and having the slobber in the wounds infect you- it has to actually absorb and digest you. Otherwise it'd be even worse.

[Molyneux]

She has your sympathies?

Seriously, The Thing is a really nasty piece of work. It's worse than any generic monster, worse than a xenomorph, worse than a zombie plague. If it weren't for the fact that the outbreak happened in Antarctica, the world would have been fucked by the organism - as opposed to the apocalyptic wankery of most zombie-inducing pathogens.

Heck, it was badass enough to serve as a major threat to a galaxy-spanning civilization in Metroid: Fusion...it's come closer than any other critter in the series to killing Samus herself!

What?

Is the Thing's grotesquetitudes anything remotely like Samus' opponents?

Metroid Fusion featured the X parasites; they were blobs of protoplasm that infested organic creatures, consumed them cell by cell from the inside out, and copied their memories and forms as they did so (with the implication that someone being duplicated didn't even know that they were slowly turning into an X until it was too late). On being damaged, they have been seen to turn into grotesque, twisted parodies of the former host body at least once.

The only real differences between the X and the Thing are that the X can actually duplicate host bodies (by splitting), and that the X are vulnerable to the Metroids, rather than fire. I'd be seriously surprised if the X weren't a direct homage to the Thing.

Ghetto Edit- However, it's impossible for the Thing to "Infect" people. It isn't a virus, despite being composed of slightly modified human cells (in its human-imitating forms, that is).

Instead, it apparently must consume you, and utilize its increased mass to subdivide into a human-sized mass of Thing cells which are shaped into a human-imitation.

This is a bit of a fine distinction, but it means that it won't reproduce by biting you and having the slobber in the wounds infect you- it has to actually absorb and digest you. Otherwise it'd be even worse.

Actually, that's debatable. In the novella, if I remember correctly, the dogs are infected by the Thing by eating it - and then having its cells consume replace theirs, one by one. Hence the question of whether a Thing host may actually still have a functioning mind, and not realize that it's been replaced.

[The Grim Squeaker]

She has your sympathies?

Seriously, The Thing is a really nasty piece of work. It's worse than any generic monster, worse than a xenomorph, worse than a zombie plague. If it weren't for the fact that the outbreak happened in Antarctica, the world would have been fucked by the organism - as opposed to the apocalyptic wankery of most zombie-inducing pathogens.

Heck, it was badass enough to serve as a major threat to a galaxy-spanning civilization in Metroid: Fusion...it's come closer than any other critter in the series to killing Samus herself!

What?

Is the Thing's grotesquetitudes anything remotely like Samus' opponents?

He's talking about the X parasite from Metroid Fusion.
That was incomparably nastier than the Thing though, It was energy based (Rockets that cause seismic earthquakes and energy beams passed right through it), it can go through energy shields and armour easily, and it can multiply asexually. Oh, and it also absorbs technological components (Samus's original suit was technological, and it had 12 copies up and running through the station within hours).
I've said it before and I've said it again, the X parasite is bar none the nastiest "Replicating" bio-threat in fiction, the only thing that comes remotely close to its capabilities would be the SG-1 replicators or Culture "level" Hostile Hegemonizing swarms.

Oh, and concerning the scenario - The Alien dies, it can't survive the cold and would be bottled up and flamethrowed to death. Ripley and the crew will die almost certainly, the Thing can just jump someone in the control room and fuck up everyone else at will, in addition to its greatly increased capabilities and intelligence.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Heck, it was badass enough to serve as a major threat to a galaxy-spanning civilization in Metroid: Fusion...it's come closer than any other critter in the series to killing Samus herself!

What?

Is the Thing's grotesquetitudes anything remotely like Samus' opponents?

Metroid Fusion featured the X parasites; they were blobs of protoplasm that infested organic creatures, consumed them cell by cell from the inside out, and copied their memories and forms as they did so (with the implication that someone being duplicated didn't even know that they were slowly turning into an X until it was too late). On being damaged, they have been seen to turn into grotesque, twisted parodies of the former host body at least once.

Curse you! (Beat me to it).
Just a minor nitpick, the host most certainly WAS aware of being infected, at least from Samus's example. That same galaxy spanning super advanced civilization was unable to save her even in her Chozo super-suit, only the Metroid vaccine stopped it. (And even then, it managed to ignore the laws of conservation of mass and regrew inside the remains of the suit).

The only real differences between the X and the Thing are that the X can actually duplicate host bodies (by splitting), and that the X are vulnerable to the Metroids, rather than fire.

And their superior penetrative abilities.

[Anguirus]

If I were the Thing, I would just stay as Kane, get frozen, and then wait until setting down on Earth before starting to fuck people up. Then the only way anyone has a chance is if the Colonial Marines somehow isolate the first city that the outbreak occurs in before it spreads and nuke the shit out of it.

The Alien dies, it can't survive the cold and would be bottled up and flamethrowed to death.

Minor nitpick: since when do adult Aliens have issues with cold OR heat? In Alien3 the thing survives having tons of molten lead dumped onto it, and only dies when the sprinklers cause it to explode via rapid temperature change. In Alien: Resurrection they used liquid N2 to punish and train the captured Aliens, and the same system is later shown to shatter a human body. And in AvP the Queen didn't seem to have a bit of trouble rampaging around Antarctica, and the temple that the other Aliens were in was still freezing cold IIRC.

I think MacReady's team can beat one A;lien with all theior explosives, but it would probably kill more then half of them iof it gets tome to groqw into an adult.

[Anguirus]

^ Ghetto edit: Wow, I must be tired, those are some of the most grotesque typos I've ever seen.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ghetto Edit- However, it's impossible for the Thing to "Infect" people. It isn't a virus, despite being composed of slightly modified human cells (in its human-imitating forms, that is).

Instead, it apparently must consume you, and utilize its increased mass to subdivide into a human-sized mass of Thing cells which are shaped into a human-imitation.

This is a bit of a fine distinction, but it means that it won't reproduce by biting you and having the slobber in the wounds infect you- it has to actually absorb and digest you. Otherwise it'd be even worse.

Actually, it can "absorb" you on a cellular level. In the movie, the crazy scientist ran simulations that saw a Thing cell take over "normal" cells one at a time. Eventually, after you get "infected", your cells would slowly get mutated into Thing cells and you won't know you've been turned into a Thing!

Of course, it'd be faster if a Thing just swallowed you up.

This is also why McCready torched that dude who got bit by the man whose chest turned into a gaping toothed maw. Well... these things are far from certain, but you've gotta flamethrower him from a safe distance. just to be sure

[Duckie]

Okay, in that case it appears that humanity is fucked no matter what, if a single thing cell can shapeshift and infect people like a virus, and there's no way to kill it short of destroying it on a cellular level.

The only apparent good news appears to be that despite being smart, the Thing isn't super intelligent. It isn't able to recognize that it could be a lot stealthier with infecting people, either because its host bodies don't have that level of knowledge in their memories or it just doesn't think like human beings.

[Duckie]

Ghetto Edit- I hate how I keep thinking of important points minutes after I post

If the Thing really were intelligent in a human/superhuman manner, and able to access its hosts memories, it would assimilate the scientist guy and realize via his thoughts/memories that the ocean is full of microorganism and organisms. It'd then take a piss in the water, and within a few years it would rule the planet.

So it's not the brightest bulb in the drawer, but it's certainly good at aping being a human being by utilizing its host's knowledge (to the point where we are, for all purposes, unsure whether or not it passes a version of the Turing Test).

[Shroom Man 777]

Piss in what water? They were in the middle of Antarctica.

The Thing was really smart. It WAS stealthy in infecting people, that's why everyone was so paranoid - no one knew who was a Thing or who wasn't, not even the Things themselves!

[Molyneux]

The Alien dies, it can't survive the cold and would be bottled up and flamethrowed to death.

Minor nitpick: since when do adult Aliens have issues with cold OR heat? In Alien3 the thing survives having tons of molten lead dumped onto it, and only dies when the sprinklers cause it to explode via rapid temperature change. In Alien: Resurrection they used liquid N2 to punish and train the captured Aliens, and the same system is later shown to shatter a human body. And in AvP the Queen didn't seem to have a bit of trouble rampaging around Antarctica, and the temple that the other Aliens were in was still freezing cold IIRC.

I think MacReady's team can beat one A;lien with all theior explosives, but it would probably kill more then half of them iof it gets tome to groqw into an adult.

Don't you know? There were only two "Alien" movies. And in the first film, it definitely moved like a cold-blooded critter - not to mention that the difference in activity between Alien and Aliens, on a (cold) spaceship rather than in a (warm) hive, is easily noticeable.

Okay, in that case it appears that humanity is fucked no matter what, if a single thing cell can shapeshift and infect people like a virus, and there's no way to kill it short of destroying it on a cellular level.

Pretty much.
Of course, it DOES freeze solid, and become inert while frozen - so if random Thing blood-spatter gets onto the ice sheet, it'll go dormant pretty quickly. All they have to do is nuke Antarctica, and they're safe.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I dont think it's lack of stealth is really any sign of it's lack of intelligence.

It was able to build some kind of aircraft, or spaceship or whatever, using scrap metal in a few hours. That alone tells me it has a higher degree of engineering skill than most humans. And frankly i think it's a safe bet that ship at the beginning of The Thing was also it's vessel, or a ship built by it's "race" or whatever.

Actually i always assumed...mind you this is pure speculation...but it seemed clear, to me anyway, they were dealing with some kind of "hive mind" deal with the Thing. What i mean is, each infected person or body is a part of it, and can function as a new, whole body if and when needed. So really i figued it just didnt care if one died, because it had others. Or put another way: imagine you're pinned under a rock, your arm is caught. The only wait out is to cut if off, so what do you do? You cut it off of course. Now imagine you have six arms instead of two...losing one is less of a problem now, ain't it?

Also i doubt it's "mission" was to infect as many people as possible, that was just it's main weapon. What i would guess happened is something like what McReady said: it crashed here, it woke up, not in the best of moods and decided it had to GTFO ASAP, if you'll pardon the mixing of acronyms.

And you'll forgive me if i'm humanizing the Thing a little too much, but it's clearly not some "dumb animal" like the xenos so it probably did have a motivation beyond just "LOL i'm in ur blood killin ur cellz!"

[Anguirus]

Don't you know? There were only two "Alien" movies. Very Happy And in the first film, it definitely moved like a cold-blooded critter - not to mention that the difference in activity between Alien and Aliens, on a (cold) spaceship rather than in a (warm) hive, is easily noticeable.

Eh, explicit evidence from lame movies trumps implicit evidence from awesome movies.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The only useful shapechanging ability we don't see Things use is that they don't grow poisonous fangs, acidic spitters, bombardier beetle glands, or other complicated organic chemical weapons. But that might just be because it's never seen a bombardier beetles, vipers, or termites before.

The lack of poison can also be explained the way that it was explained in the novella why it didn't just turn into an alien bird-equivalent and fly away, instead of going to the trouble of building a flying machine. Namely, it's from a different planet, and didn't have a template for a creature designed to fly well in our air pressure, gravity, etc; the same would apply to most organic poisons. Alien neurotoxin, say, wouldn't necessarily do a thing to a human.

There's also the possibility that it simply didn't want to use anything that would kill anyone, thus leaving them useless a targets for conversion. Sort of the way humans don't hunt deer for food with rocket launchers.

Another thought; judging it's behavior, once it takes over a body, I think that it becomes at least in part a separate Thing with it's own identity. And, also judging from it's behavior, for some reason it prefers absorbing creatures by direct personal contact, and not via indirect infection; otherwise, it could have split off hordes of insect or mouse sized fragments that would've gotten everyone. Perhaps when it grabs someone directly and converts them it passes on it's own personality or something of the sort ? In either case, I suspect that it didn't do stuff like break into bugThing fragments or spit Thingbits into the installation's water supply is because it didn't want to, not because that wouldn't work.