If the corruption, the zerg, the tyranids, space zombies or whatever interplanetary plague starts taking over a planet...

Only the overly autistic protoss delete the whole planet if they so much as find a zergling paw print there

Just one drop.

Zerg - Until you can no longer feasibly hold them back, or prevent exponential growth. Low double digits at absolute worst.
Tyranids - As above.
Flood - Glass it. Immediately.
The corruption - buy some purification powder you cheap fuck it's like 8 copper a bag

But what about hallow?

One silver per vile powder, or just make it out of mushrooms.

Now I want to see a big Free For All fight between all the things you mentioned, but throw the Necromorphs in there as well.

Why contain it?

Pearlwood is beautiful.

We had a thread like that like a year ago, but OP also made the mistake of throwing in the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts, and the Heartless are unstoppable unless you have a specific kind of weapon - a Keyblade - from the Kingdom Hearts setting that Tyrannids, Zerg, Necromorphs, the Flood, etc., are incapable of manifesting.

It led to the always-amusing situation of 40k fags desperately trying to defend their setting against a more powerful threat that it couldn't, because 40k is actually only middling tier in terms of power, something that 40k fans never want to admit.

IIRC, Heartless can be defeated by magic which is why you're not completely helpless against them when you lose the Keyblade in Hollow Bastion in KH1.

Tzeentch will handle it.

That might be more due to Sora's presence, since he's the rightful owner of Kingdom Key; or it might be that the entire time Riku is close enough with Kingdom Key that the Heartless can be defeated.

Note that when Sora is temporarily turned into a Shadow, Donald and Goofy are completely incapable of hurting him or any other Shadow, let alone the more powerful Heartless. Likewise, the worlds of Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and Merlin's homeworld are not exactly lacking in the magic department themselves, but all have been overrun by the time Kingdom Hearts I begins.

Possibly. I was thinking that maybe you can defeat a Heartless without a Keyblade, but the Keyblade itself is needed to destroy them. They just somehow reform otherwise.

You can model any kind of spreading space plague as a normal plague. The formula is:

R0 = β/γ

Where R0 (reproductive number) is the number of secondary infections, and β/γ is the number of contacts per year.

Each of those is a variable that depends on the setting. Given that the Flood probably has a reproductive number of between 12 and several million (as the basic Flood spore can produce Infection Forms from any area that has enough biomass to support it), there's no stable number you can expect a Flood infestation. The β/γ is probably exceptionally high as well, considering the Flood infestation is airborne as well as delivered by Infection Forms. A single Flood spore can quite literally exterminate a species.

Contrast this with a Genestealer cult, where you basically only have to worry about Genestealers once they reach enough of a critical mass to start attracting the Hive Mind, and they don't breed quickly enough to overcome quarantine and extermination processes. On the space plague level, an individual Genestealer can only infect so many individuals on its own, and it takes multiple generations to produce another Genestealer. I also assume that giving birth to purestrain Genestealers and first generation hybrids is generally lethal to the mother, so that reduces reproductive potential again. Exterminatus only makes sense if one world has a Genestealer Cult has critical mass, but there are other inhabited worlds in the sector that need defending.

I don't know that much about how the Zerg replicate, but outside of infestation there's not much a Zerg can do to use humans to reproduce. Given that the plot of the first game starts with Protoss orbital bombardment at the first sign of infestation, I think standard procedure is to saturation bomb any area that has suspected Zerg activity. If it's 1% of the planet, you bomb 1% of the planet. If it's 100%, 100%.

Depends entirely on the setting, the enemy, and the force that's "purging"

Nids shit stomp all the others with ease.

Remove them and it might be a bit more interesting

One.

If we leave aside stuff post kerrigan being "cured", I don't thibk there's a sigle known instance of the Terrans taking back a planet without the protoss purging it first.

And i mean, hell, congrats, you killed the cerebrate, congrats on being a dark templar, now you just have a mindless horde that you'll never be able to effectively exterminate and will serve as an excellent beachhead for future Zerg invasion

>the Antarctic environment is the only factor keeping the Thing from infesting and consuming the entire planet
That movie is such a perfect horror piece.

Absolutely my favorite horror movie. Possibly my favorite movie full stop. I wish I had the time, DMing acumen, and group to host a game based off it, but, as it stands, that'd be like someone that is illiterate trying to read Finnegan's Wake, I think.

If you haven't already, read 'The Things', a short story told from the thing's point of view.

> It can be whatever it wants.

Not at all. If this was the case they would have found the strain that is immune to Protoss weaponry.

Aren't there scenes where Leon/Cloud/Aron beat up Heartless without having Sora around?

I didn't like that story, it made the parasite too anthopomorphic in thought. The Thing is entirely too instinct-driven when it isn't playing pretend to have some deep philosophical debate over "muh cellular unity of purpose" in terms a human could even comprehend.
Because that blood test sample was SO committed to the cause, amirite

Okay, fine.

"Whatever it wants to be as long as it's physically possible". Happy now? You know, most people are capable of making that assumption.

I like to think that the extremely awkward size of the thing and its resulting mental state was the cause of the story taking the turn it did. With the amount of mass and near-human intelligence it displayed, it wasn't off in very good shape. If it had been bigger it'd have obviously been better off, but ironically I think it'd also be better off if it was small, like the size of a bird or something. Something too small to have higher reasoning, and driven purely on instinct alone.

Depends on what the planet does.
youtube.com/watch?v=7qeNasdgBFU
When you watched that video, you knew what it was like to be Matt Ward, and it was awesome.

Aye, but they reform, which is why it is a lost cause- which is why none of those characters are on their homeworld; They fought, they lost and they ran.

Tell me about the Flood. Playing Halo 1 now on Legendary for first time.

I think the Thing is more like a Chinese room than true self-awareness.

Reminds me of another short, 'Blindsight', about a highly advanced alien species that had never gotten over the hump of self-awareness. They were space-faring technologically and could do calculus in their heads, but didn't understand reason, philosophy, art, etc.

Heck, I'd put it more as a perfect emulation of consciousness without an experiential core. Philosophical zombie.

Other than the obvious "SPACE ZOMBIES" aspect present in the games, you only ever see the gravemind in the games as their highest form of intelligence. To my understanding in the books they can get to lovecraft-level, reality bending shit as the central mind exponentially increases. Also the flood can reform and restart entirely from a single spore, and has done multiple times. Not the little infection form enemy, a microscopic, airborne spore is enough to wipe out a species, and inevitebly the universe [/spoiler]which is why in Halo 3 they glass the entirety of Africa.

Also incorrect.
"Whatever it wants, so long as it can find a creature with this trait to assimilate, or else induce in another species/zerg strain" is more correct.

Obviously once the invasion is irreversible, that's never a concrete number, depending on what resources you have.

=][= The answer is simple. One. =][=