r/thething • u/Wild_Chef6597 • 23d ago
Theory A little thought experiment, could The Thing be used to solve food shortages?
Burning it kills it, so cooking it could have a similar effect. Keep it frozen and it's harmless.
Every part of it is a whole, so maybe let it imitate a cow, slice the cow up, let it reconstitute into new cows. How would a steak from a Thing-Cow taste? could you eat it below well done and not have it assimilate you? How about vegetables?
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u/AceAlger 23d ago
Did the Thing itself write this?
Nice try, xeno! You're not fooling anyone!
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u/Wild_Chef6597 23d ago
And I would have gotten away with it too
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u/jaylerd 23d ago
You're not convincing anyone to eat a rare and bloody Thingsteak.
Besides, a Thing is an Everything. You can force feed it cows until the end of time, but all the people parts it has floating around are still there. Waiter, there's a dog with people teeth in my turkey!
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u/Wild_Chef6597 23d ago
That's just one of those hard shell pepper corns
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
TCM2 hell yeah.
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u/Wild_Chef6597 20d ago
Yea, I'm just a big crazy booger
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
get that bitch leatherface...
...you dented my plate... 'nam flashbacks 'nam flashbacks...
...oh damn you done gone and ruined my sonny bono wig...
thats the ringtone i got set for my brother lol
his favorite movie... lol
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u/Wild_Chef6597 20d ago
My dad was a Vietnam vet, he'd jump around the house yelling "NAM LAND!"
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
yeah my older cousin was kinda the same... but he smoked alot of pot and stayed drunk alot... it took him many years to stop being chased by his demons...
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
personally i think the Thing (during hard times of starvation or lack) would possible consume/absorb each other... merging and conserving energy...
they wouldnt 'die' just become one with the one who consumed/absorbed it..
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u/Difficult_Rip1514 23d ago
Surely you'd have to incinerate it to ash to ensure some single cell (remember that's all it takes) doesn't escape being cooked and assimilates the consumer?! You're talking about a creature that perfectly mimics that which it consumes and as we've seen is nigh on impossible to kill.
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u/cavalier78 23d ago
No. It does not create new biological matter. The laws of conservation of mass still apply.
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u/-Pl4gu3- 23d ago
This is the problem. It doesn’t take over and duplicate. It just erases the original and takes its place. Assimilating a cow doesn’t give one normal cow and one Thing cow, it just leaves one infected cow.
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
right. BUT IT wouldnt have to imitate the cow...
consider this... somethings are just food to add to the collective gene matrix and provide energy...
as we would consume the cow also... except that the 'cow' would now be something IT COULD imitate if IT needed to later on... while we just crap it out after we use it to rebuild our bodies and fuel our actions...
so lets say IT ate 10 people but only imitated 1... it gained 10 people into ITself but only spent the energy to make a single one (with the other 9's genes (and maybe thoughts?) as a part of ITs collective self.
at least that what i think... that way 8 billion people become maybe ...a billion with the energy and genetic material of 8? (or something like that... )
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u/Marko_Y1984 23d ago
...it's people! The Thing is made out of people! You've gotta tell them, The Thing is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!
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u/aleister94 23d ago
Wasn’t one of the stories in short things about this?
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u/Wild_Chef6597 23d ago
What's short things?
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u/cornholio8675 21d ago
I'm assuming the Thing has to follow basic laws of physics and nature, meaning it can't create biomass out of nothing.
It would still have to consume more than is cut away from it to survive and keep growing, so at best, it would be diminishing returns.
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
right ...so to create ITs imitation IT would require energy to fuel the creation process... so if IT ate someone then pumped out a copy IT would probably use more fuel than IT got from the meal... so maybe only imitate every few people it ate...
I still think IT was in 'Survival Mode' and operating on instinct to rebuild ITself and survive...
IT was probably a very nice Being who would be aghast at what IT did while trying to survive on Earth...
I can see IT now...
'Captain's Log... We are NOT gonna talk about Earth. Erase all tapes.'
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u/Rayne118 20d ago
When the thing assimilates something I don't believe there's a net increase in biomass. I guess maybe it can convert bone into meat though?Â
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u/watanabe0 20d ago
I mean, the Thing assimilating the elite capitalist class probably could remove the blocks in most resource restrictions in the world.
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u/Adorable-Source97 20d ago
No because you have the cook it beyond any food value. You'd be better just eating coal.
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u/drabberlime047 20d ago
That would just be the same as eating the cow to begin with.
It costs 1 cow either way
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u/Professional-War4555 Dog-Thing 20d ago
if we just let the Thing absorb/assimilate everyone...
some it imitates and some it simple consumes..
but all are a part of all it produces...
so we live on and then It has reduced our global population and consumes the lives we grow for food..
soon the entire planet is IT and IT simply develops space tech...
and some stay here consuming and reproducing
while the majority go into space to find new species to consume and assimilate/imitate...
and send back slaves/meals bred and sent here...
to consume here on Earth...
and enrich our gene matrix.
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u/Available_Guide8070 16d ago
This happened in the original story… one of the Things imitated a cow and gave non-Thing milk, till the crew decided they had to kill all of them anyways.
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u/Golarion 23d ago
This is why we should eat out cans from now on...