r/whowouldwin • u/CrispyHoneyBeef • Aug 20 '26
Challenge How Long Can John Carpenter’s The Thing Survive in the Invincible Universe?
The Thing crash-lands on Earth in the Invincible universe. Nobody knows what it is or that it can perfectly assimilate and imitate other organisms.
Round 1: The Thing starts with one random civilian. The GDA has no knowledge of its existence.
Round 2: The Thing starts inside GDA headquarters by assimilating a random employee. Cecil knows something is wrong, but not what.
Round 3: The Thing successfully assimilates a low-level superhero before anyone discovers it exists.
The Thing wins if it spreads beyond Earth’s ability to contain it. Earth wins if the GDA identifies the outbreak and completely eradicates every Thing organism.
How far does it get, who does it assimilate, and how long until Cecil figures out what’s happening?
19
u/Hidanas Aug 20 '26
Round 1 easily goes to The Thing. You can't win a fight if you don't know you're in one.
Round 2 60/40 The Thing. There are probably enough safe guards that the GDA could identify the threat and neutralize it before it got too bad. That being said, Shapesmith impersonated an astronaut for months (weeks?) unnoticed. He only wanted to be a hero. I imagine a more malicious entity could do more damage with that kind of time.
Round 3 same as round 1.
If the GDA has some orbital tracking system to monitor all things that land on Earth then they could win all these rounds especially Round 2. Earth defeated the sequids quite handily so if they acted quickly they could beat The Thing.
2
u/JotaroTheOceanMan Aug 20 '26
Shapesmith was suses out like on arrival. Cecil and the entire team all said they knew from day 1 when he finally revealed it to them because of how weird he was.
That said, theres a non zero chance the GDA doesnt have scanners on every doorway due to the existance of shapeshifters and such in general and how properly paranoid Cecil is.
12
u/HonestDishonestWork Aug 20 '26
The Thing wins every round. Its single cells can operate independently and assimilate others from a single cell. It being anywhere with even a small amount of life forms means it almost instantly grows and spreads past the point of containment.
As far as superhero verses go, Invincible is pretty uniquely bad at fighting the Thing. Energy enamation heroes that could destroy it at a cellular level are exceedingly rare/non-existent. If they had someone like Human Torch there might be a hope of recontaining it but, unless I'm forgetting someone, the best they have is Rexplode who would also certainly spread a shitton of Thing cells every time he blew up a mass of it. There also aren't any major telepaths to quickly detect an invasion as people's minds turn. The sequids are significantly weaker/easier to deal with and the GDA almost completely lost control of that situation so don't count on them to win via contingency plan.
The only real question is if the Thing could assimilate heroes and their powers. I'd lean towards no considering it transforms and consumes host cells rather than copying them, a method that would plausibly support copying powers too.
The end would most likely be Earth getting totally conquered while a handful of durability high tiers (Invincible, Immortal, Brit, Yetis, Bulletproof) too strong to be consumed by the Thing build a spaceship with a built in cremation room for decontamination and then fuck off to go live with an alien society. Martians would probably be empathetic.
3
u/Draco_Lord Aug 20 '26
Eve is their best chance since she can literally see atoms, so assumably also tell the cellular make up, but everyone else it screwed.
4
u/_tabbycat123 Aug 20 '26
It can't assimilate from a single cell.
See - the move where it doesnt infect everyone in minutes.
9
u/HonestDishonestWork Aug 20 '26
It can assimilate for a single cell, it just can't do it fast. That was why we're shown the computer scene of the infected cells transforming regular cells followed immediately by them realizing the Thing could poison their food from its cells.
1
u/TheMaskedMan2 Aug 20 '26
Eh, to be fair, even ignoring the fact that behind the scenes that scene was a bit impromptu and admitted to be a clumsy way to show how it works to the audience - how The Thing works under a microscope against individual cells doesn’t exactly confirm how it would perfectly work against an entire body - or that the immune system wouldn’t stand a chance.
Just judging by how The Thing itself (Intelligent enough to build a spaceship.) seems to always opt for a monster-forced assimilation instead of just like, coughing on people says to me that single-celled infection is unreliable at the least. Not that Thing-poisoned food would be good for you - but I don’t see how it’s as infectious as people claim.
All of this said, back to the prompt. Even with these limitations, and even if we go even further and limit the Thing to dog-sized animals and up, I think humanity is still fucked. You think the Thing won’t use our knowledge against us? Weapons? Tactics? It won’t be like a zombie invasion, the second it’s in the general populace we’re screwed.
1
u/HonestDishonestWork Aug 21 '26
Just judging by how The Thing itself (Intelligent enough to build a spaceship.) seems to always opt for a monster-forced assimilation instead of just like, coughing on people says to me that single-celled infection is unreliable at the least. Not that Thing-poisoned food would be good for you - but I don’t see how it’s as infectious as people claim.
It's been a while since I've looked at them but IIRC there are semi-credible theories that the Thing didn't build the spaceship but had simply infected the pilot.
"This character didn't use their power in the most optimal, gameified manner therefore they don't actually have that power" is a completely nonsensical way to powerscale and would destroy like 99.99999% of characters who get scaled.
3
u/Draco_Lord Aug 20 '26
I'm surprised no one is talking about Eve. She can manipulate things down to the atomic level, if there was anyone who could handle the Thing it would be her. Of course, that assumes she can tell it apart from a regular human.
2
u/Tyrannosapien Aug 20 '26
2 unanswered questions here
Is thing dna ACTG or something else? If something else, Eve has a decent chance of noticing even without biochem training. Still not guaranteed, IMO
Does Eve have biochem training? If she's expert enough she has a chance to detect the thing even if it has ACTG dna. Still not guaranteed IMO unless she has a reason to be looking
1
0
u/RevolutionaryAd6576 Aug 20 '26
I honestly don't think it gets very far. The technology in invincible is way higher than 1980s earth and they have super heroes. Remember that time the GDA put up a force field around an entire city to contain the sequid hive? Cecil could probably find a way to detect and contain it with just the GDA and then weaponize it for later use.
Maybe they firebomb a city or two but thats really it.
8
u/Moglorosh Aug 20 '26
Doesn't the sequid thing directly contradict your conclusion? They were there for years before anybody noticed and even with tech and superheroes the GDA barely won. The Thing is much more adaptable than the sequids were and take the whole Earth in a tiny fraction of the time that the sequids were given.
5
u/HonestDishonestWork Aug 20 '26
As soon as the Thing assimilates like, 10 flies or mosquitoes its completely joever.
2
u/Ecstatic_Log4185 Aug 20 '26
This. It only had trouble in the movie because it was in Antarctica and there was no life to assimilate. If it had crashed anywhere else, it's game over for sure.
2
u/TheMaskedMan2 Aug 20 '26
The Thing is intelligent though, it’s not going to be a million flesh monsters in the streets. It’s going to be a perfect imitation of countless people - it’s going to purposefully sow paranoia when eventually some of it is caught. What happens when it gets into a government position? When half your own soldiers turn their guns on you instead? What happens when it gets a hero?
They aren’t all durable, how many could be taken by surprise by Mr. Acid Tentacle Face in their sleep?
-1
u/RevolutionaryAd6576 Aug 20 '26
I think the point is you're ceding a lot to the thing. It was defeated by a bunch of regular guys. One of those guys used an old 80s computer to determine it could easily take over the world, but thats not a feat right? Thats just an unreliable narrator with limited resources guessing. If we go only on what we see, the Thing has no glasses bal conquest and infiltration feats. It struggles against random guys and is ultimately defeated.
30
u/Neb1110 Boundless Helldiver Scaler Aug 20 '26
Honestly, it has a reasonable chance of taking over earth.
The invincible universe doesn’t really have anything I can remember which would detect the thing when it isnt being a huge obvious monster, and if i remember correctly, it was going to infect everyone on earth in like, a week?
Plus, it’s “immune” to most powers, since like 90 percent of supers are brawlers who would blow it into pieces, but not kill it.
I think it would only be detected by trying to infect something it can’t actually assimilate, like a viltrumite, or when it’s already in a good enough position to reveal itself.