And as for them opening some pickles, the aliens would get some caustic blood on the jar and open it that way.
How, exactly, would it become xenomorph? The Thing operates on a cellular level. Xenomorph blood is a molecular acid.
IFF the Thing can re-arrange itself on a molecular level, then I’ll concede the point. Not till then.
How would it become xenomorph? By starting to take over from the outside in. First, it takes over the exoskeleton, then moves inwards from there, taking over blood vessels and such. I’m not too hip to the exact specifics of all the xenomorph’s physiology, but as I can see, their skin is imune to the acidic quality of their blood, so obviously, it doesn’t burn threw all organic material. The Thing may not be able to imitate the blood, but it can certainly make imitate organic material that is immune to it. And, if the entire body is a problem, the Thing really just needs to take over the brain, and then it can exist completely unnoticed in the hive and live a happy little life as a drone (as has been stated, sometimes the Thing’s dups are so exact, they don’t always know they’re duplicates until they suffer from extreme trauma that makes survival in that form unmanageable).
What is it about the ALIENS that leads every human scientist to have an overwhelming URGE to take themback to the earth? In spite of the fact that the ALIENS have killed hundreds of humans (including those macho dyke space marines), there is always somebody who wants to bring them back to “study” them!
Maybe the aliens have a way of inserting themselves intohuman brains, with the message: “take me to the earth”?
No, it’s because they’d make great attractions at carnivals!
I would say that the ultimate alien would be the Blob (or something similar) an enormous mass of xenobiological goo that consumes all living matter and adds it too itself, growing exponentially larger with each new meal.
Of course the blob can be stopped if you can find a way to freeze it, but if it grows large enough before anyone figures this out then, logically, there’d be no stopping it.
In a straight up physical fight with no weapons involved, there’d really be no beating the Blob.
What about trapping it in a box?
When you are talking about the Thing you’re talking about Ben Grimm, right?
The blob isn’t indestructible it’s ujst really hard to damage significantly. If you sealed it up inside a teflon chamber it would start eating itself and would eventually die.
I’m a big Niven fan, read about everything related to the Known Space future history. I remember something mentioning that Kzin were actually more intelligent on average than humans. They were held back by their feudal social structure and a couple of dozen millenia of religious eugenics (their females are nonsentient but 30,000 years before were just as smart as males), but they are still very intelligent. After the excessive aggressiveness was culled out of them, they produced some exceptional individuals (Chmeee is one of my favorite characters of all time).
Oh yeah, Kzin also happen to be from a planet with much higher gravity than Earth, with a much older ecology - the arms race between predators and prey has been going on much longer, and Kzin were at the top of the food chain. Comparing them to Terrestrial felines, even the really big ones, is doing them an injustice. An unintelligent, unarmed Kzin could probably shred five full-grown Bengal Tigers without serious injury.
Well a Kzin is a badass mofo no doubt. Physically there are probably only three specis in Niven’s “know universe” that could to one in.
Bandersnatch
Protector
Those guys with the diamond claw knuckles who see with sonar. (Crashlander)
Of those three Protectors are certainly the most intelligent. If the could just get along and ignore their primal urges they would have still been around in numbers to greet Luis Wu.
Which reminds me. The Thing probably could not kill or infect a Bandersnatch since they are one gigantic cell. Impossible in reality, of course just like The Thing.
For those who do not know a Bandersnatch is a blue whale sized land animal. White in color and highly intelligent. Genetically engineered as a food item for a long dead race (Thrint) they were given intelligence by a subject race (Thununktipun) in order to assist in the overthrow of the Thrint.
They single celled, intelligent, and supposedly taste delicious. When originally discoverd by humans they were hunted until they fought back and killed humans. It was then discoverd that they were sentient and apologized to for the hunting.
They have since elected to allow continued hunting of their numbers is they are allowed to fight back. The average survival rate for humans on Bandersnatch safari is about 50%. Bandersnatch being cumpletely unarmed and unarmored and humans hunting from tanks with plasma, leaser, and high explosives.
For some reason they can remember back to the dawn of their races intelligence (Niven says it’s because they reproduce via mytosis).
Another Niven creature that would be tough to beat would be a Cecils Grog. Within a given radius that have total mind control. They use it for food as they are immobile after sexual maturity so they convince food to get in their mouth.
Against a Predator this would not be the best as they have ranged weapons, but against the Thing or a Giger Alien it would probably be great.
A Giger Alien on a Protector would be bad news indeed. Both specis has a stron compulsion to either reproduce or to allow their own group to do so unchecked. Plus the Protector specis are possibly the most intelligent race in the known universe (or were. They are all dead pretty much).
As in so many situations, the exact circumstances of the conflict have at least as much influence as the inherent properties of the combatants.
In a long-term war, I’d bet on Protectors. Given time to think, they’ll solve any problem they have to.
Close-up dirty fight, I’d have to go with the Thing. It’s almost impossible to fully kill one, since every hair, scale, and speck of spilled blood is a new Thing. And all it really has to do is spit on you, and you’ve lost.
If a Thing meets an unprepared Protector… we’re all doomed! 
More than once, I wondered how bright the Thing really was. I mean, they could adapt human intelligence, but on occasion, during the movie, you wouldn’t have known it by much. On the other hand, when it takes a flamethrower to do you in, how smart do you have to BE?
I’m inclined to think that neither the Blob nor the Thing could handle the Giger Aliens. Floating around somewhere on the web is the original script for the third movie… a script that was not used… and why? We have no idea, although it would have been hellaciously expensive to film.
In this alternate “Aliens 3” script, it is established that the Aliens do in fact take on some of the characteristics of their host creature; in this script, we encounter gorilla aliens, dog aliens, and even bunny aliens, all of whom are eyeless, fanged, clawed, and homicidal as a bastard on Father’s Day.
Toward the end, the dying android Bishop has a conversation with Corporal Hicks in which he tells Hicks that “the Aliens are the biological equivalent of antimatter.” The Aliens are anti-life in its purest form – they kill, and they spread, and they kill, and they expand, multiply, grow, and kill some more. It’s us or them, now, for the fate of the universe.
This would seem to imply that the Aliens are just too weird for the Thing to analyze, assimilate, and copy. They’d be fighting like hell. Admittedly, all an Alien could do to a Thing would be to shred it, thus breaking it down into a scattering of smaller Things. I tend to think the Things would have the advantage.
The same would likely happen for a Blob what tried to manhandle a Thing. An Alien, on the other hand… hm. Good question. Would the Blob’s acidic secretions even faze an Alien?
In a universe where such creatures as the Aliens, the Blob, and the Thing actually existed, I wouldn’t be too worried about the Kzinti. They’d be as warm and comfortable as teddy bears, comparitively speaking… and quite likely our allies against the creepiness between the stars…
While the movie naturally wants to portray its creatures as extremely dangerous, the claims that the characters make about how horribly unstoppable the Giger aliens are just don’t seem to fit with the observed events.
Granted, they’re strong, clawed and fanged, tough, and dangerous to injure. They have some degree of intelligence, though apparently not enough to adopt technology to any great degree. They are fairly dangerous critters, to be sure.
On the minus side, they depend solely on grab-it-and-rip-it-apart tactics, aided by force of numbers. Bullets kill them quite nicely. A woman once defeated a queen Giger with a piece of cargo-handling equipment.
Notice that we’ve only ever seen them operate when they had plenty of dark spaces, nooks, crannies, and winding corridors to hide and skulk in. Also, we’ve only seen them face adversaries who are either basically unarmed, uninformed, or unorganized.
How many dozens or hundreds of Gigers were killed in Alien 2? Killed by a small unit of Marines who had no experience with Gigers, and were lightly-armed, poorly-briefed, vastly outnumbered, and tended to fall apart under pressure.
Now, I would NOT want to fight one! But all they are, really, is half-bright predatory animals. An ORGANIZED military unit (not like the sad outfit shown in Alien 4) would cut them to ribbons… especially on some battleground OTHER THAN a labyrinthine, very badly lit complex of some sort.
First off, they are called Xenomorphs, not “aliens”.
Secondly, nothing (save cold) can defeat the awesome power of the Blob!!!
No. Go watch the John Carpenter movie.
Yeah, I mentioned the blob earlier, and still feel it’s probably the best killer out there. The whole suseptability to cold could be a problem, but if we’re talking "Dropped in a 50’x50’ box, which is then shaken up to make them fight, I’m pretty sure this thing would win out against anything else. From what I can gather, it’s really just a giant space ameoba. It eats, grows bigger, eats some more…I’m rather curious at what point it multiplies. Still, as is, unless the Thing was able to get to it’s nucleus (assuming it had one), it would probably be dissolved rather quickly. I doubt a xenomorph’s blood would do any good against it, and in fact, would probably just feed the damn thing. I’m also confident it would have no qualms dissolving the exoskeleton. Even if it couldn’t, it could find some way in to dissolve all those nice squishy bits on the inside, and just leave the husk behind. Plus, outside of the cold, the blob seems rather adaptable to any environment, and seeing as how the xenomorphs need heat in order to colonize, I’m guessing it would feel quite at home.
I am curious about these Bandersnatches zen101 was talking about. What do they do to fight back, exactly? Are they similar to the Blob, or are they just big egg yolks that talk dirty? And, if they’re so yummy, I’m pretty sure the Thing could just change into something with a lot of mouths and teeth and have itself a nice snack.
As for why all these scientists want to take the aliens back to earth…plot device, mainly, but not knowing too much about the future’s governments and the like, I’m sure it’d be really great to have a super biological weapon that your enemy didn’t. I mean, just think what those pinko Commies would do when they saw a swarm of xenomorphs coming over the ridge carrying the old Red, White and Blue, eh?
Oh, and Wang-Ka, can you post a link to that Alien 3 script, or tell us anything else about it? Personally, it sounds a lot like the comic storyline that came out with the toys, and not all that good.
As a side note, the xenomorphs do have eyes. The hybrid from Alien Ressurrection is actually a rather good depiction of what their heads look like under the glossy dome. You can really see it better in some old shots of the original costume design from Alien. They’re set right up in front, just like a predator’s should be. Vicious little buggers.