Who would win?

We actually don't know, because the circumstances of the Outpost 31 outbreak placed the Thing outside of its usual lifecycle and ecology. It was an organism that evolved for an alien biosphere and used mimicry to prey upon other lifeforms that were adapted to it in turn. Maybe under those circumstances, the Thing could have some fort of reproduction (sexual or asexual) or it may have been entirely reliant on replication of prey species.

But when it was abducted by alien zoologists and taken to Earth, all bets were off. It had new species that were completely unadapted to it, and it was in total panic mode trying to get the fuck off of Antarctica. So in short, everything we see happen in the movie doesn't tell us much about the original creature, just what happens when the Thing is panicking/at a buffet.

Attached: Oh Shit I'm Sorry.jpg (800x800, 256.37K)

This thread made me want to watch The Thing again but I'm already watching jap wrestling dammit

The Thing can't assimilate the Flood

>But when it was abducted by alien zoologists and taken to Earth
when was that established? I though that first ship was the thing's, it was building something that looked like a UFO out of scrap during the movie

The Thing is the cooler story, but the flood is the stronger enemy. The flood can reproduce with a single spore and devour entire galaxies. In a matter of a couple of hours they take over the halo ring. In the matter of a couple of hours Kurt Russell killed the Thing with a flamethrower.

I thought that the ship shown belonged to another alien that the thing probably absorbed and caused to crash

>In the matter of a couple of hours Kurt Russell killed the Thing with a flamethrower
This is questionable if you believe Childs is a Thing

Can the thing use the host knowledge to its advantage? The proto-gravemind flood can absorb knowledge on the thing weakness and develop tactics using that info.

It's mostly ambiguous just how much knowledge the thing gains from the host, it seems to carry over behaviour well enough though

The thing would assimilate the flood as the flood needs large enough biomass to fight and spread. The battle wouldn't be combat from vs thing form it would be cell v cell and seeing as the flood are more basic when spores they would be food for the thing I base this off the fact that the rings kill off things larger than the spores of flood meaning if the rings fired the thing would be ok. The flood is a superior combat enemy able to fight things like tanks and soldiers more effectively but the thing is about slowly taking over someones body cell by cell and deception. We can also compare this with how the flood would handle the same situation in the movie the thing. The flood has no additional biomass to create soldiers and without a gravemind would just attack. It would be sighted as a monster immediately and everyone would gather shotguns and flamethrowers and defeat whatever combat forms are around. This is why the things was more deadly because it retained full intelligence down to the cell.

Attached: 1576640014407.jpg (1044x1044, 573.88K)

The thing can't use dead matter, the flood can. The flood is also smaller and works faster.
Of course they're both bullshit fantasy diseases that would never survive in reality.

The They/Them.

Attached: winter witch.jpg (576x1024, 50.6K)

Enough knowledge carries over that it can create a spaceship out of helicopter parts. So presumably it learns every single thing the host knew.

This. But it must also be considered that a flood infestation reaching a galactic level starts distorting reality with FTL psychic control from a hyper-intelligent consciousness.
Flood scales geometrically more powerful as it speads whereas the thing can only ever be the sum of its parts.
With an isolated infection on a single planet, the thing would win due to its direct competitiveness at small scale. With competing halves of an infected galaxy the flood would win, being able to micromanage every single individual and detect any thing infiltration due to that.

wait is the bungies flood where its pretty much a biological wildfire thats spread so it cant be contained
or
343s EPIC PWNGING FLOOD THAT ALTER
S SPACE TIME INFECTS COMPUTERS AND HAS A SHIELD THAT PREVENTS IT FROM BEING TAGGED!!! JERRY!! YES IT DOES!!!!

Attached: 1611524065026.jpg (750x1000, 159.33K)

>muh vs they'd fight
Nah they would assimilate each other into the ultimate parasitic organism

Attached: Pepe no 36.jpg (1000x800, 57.3K)

The Thing worked entirely for the purpose of survival. Even in situations where it could've easily attached to everyone in the room, it didn't since its survival depended on them.
The Floor can fuck up entire civilizations on one spore alone. Even giga niga space magic can't kill them, you can only starve them to death. Don't forget about Graveminds so smart they can fuck up artificial intelligences with 50 year long conversations.

If the thing could mimic flood cells i'd say this is a best case scenario for it. I mean they're organic so why not.