Chestburster food requirement?

Then don't put a clickbaity "Explained" in the title, but cheers for that tidbit of snark.  It's been nearly a week since I've had any.

"Alright thanks S.M. The first i heard about it was Colonial Marines.The wiki too.Now i know you're going to say don't take wikis seriously and Colonial Marines isn't canon,but when i posted the thread about surgical removal of Chestbursters,i was curious how many people thought that,because you're right really i don't hear it very often,but i thought it was worth asking.I take it that's not one covered in The Weyland Yutani report?"

I think the cancer thing was theorised prior to Colonial Marines, but that was the first I heard of it too.  It's a theory - just not a widely held one.

I don't see a problem with wikis as long as they're properly referenced.

I don't really care for it based on the fact that they extracted the Queen from Ripley and there was no mention of cancer.  Nor when they talked about removing the burster from Purvis.  Pus there's no obvious tumours on Ripley's scan in Alien3.  There's a couple of caveats with those arguments, but that's the reason I don't find it valid.

As an aside I was re-reading the Steel Egg novel recently and one guy in that cut himself open and pulled his burster out, before dying of blood loss.

These are all interesting theories but I've read and held to the idea that the chestburter births whenever it wants. There is the idea that the "perfection" of the species is seen across all cycles of its life. For example, the eggs can remain in stasis for ages, never decaying, never dying, but waiting. Until someone comes along and shakes it from its hibernation (Kane -- R.I.P. Mr John Hurt). So the chestburster can wait until the opportune time to birth itself. The queen Ripley carried took ages, we know, but it wasn't it convenient that she suddenly decide to erupt when Ripley made up her mind to leap and kill herself? The queen had no choice at that point. And why had she waited prior to that? She could be reacting to the stress Ripley was under and felt it would be unsafe. The colonist Mary as well. Her chestburster could also have felt the stress she was under -- she wanted to be killed -- so it felt the need to flee.

There are other bits about a telepathic connection that the chestburster, and even adult aliens, have with their hosts and human "prey" in general. I feel this is a better explanation tbh. But it's always fun to theorize.

from the ones I have seen almost all say 'I think' or 'this could explain'. that's why they call it a theory. when theres nothing factual they do say its what they think. basically doing what a lot of us on here have done which makes this forum so fascinating. u get MOST people on here coming out at least once saying 'I never thought of it that way' or 'interesting point' which is what I love about here, the open minds of most people

"These are all interesting theories but I've read and held to the idea that the chestburter births whenever it wants. There is the idea that the "perfection" of the species is seen across all cycles of its life. For example, the eggs can remain in stasis for ages, never decaying, never dying, but waiting. Until someone comes along and shakes it from its hibernation (Kane -- R.I.P. Mr John Hurt). So the chestburster can wait until the opportune time to birth itself. The queen Ripley carried took ages, we know, but it wasn't it convenient that she suddenly decide to erupt when Ripley made up her mind to leap and kill herself? The queen had no choice at that point. And why had she waited prior to that? She could be reacting to the stress Ripley was under and felt it would be unsafe. The colonist Mary as well. Her chestburster could also have felt the stress she was under -- she wanted to be killed -- so it felt the need to flee."

There's some merit to this.  It makes sense that a burster would want to abandon the host simply for self preservation. This happened in the comic for Alien3 when the Queen embryo crawled out of the dead Newt's mouth and into Ripley's.

However it's undermined by Ripley's burster not birthing when Dillon was going to kill her.

@ Assimilated XenoMorph

Your statement "This also begs the question, could a host so unhealthy that a facehugger would not allow its self to impregnate the host? that's if the facehugger could tell the health of the host obviously..."

This  brings up so many angles. Consider that the face-huggers are attuned to living lifeforms. We see that they breach their egg sacks and emerge when a victim/prey/unlucky bastard is in the vicinity. 

In light of this and to bring a little levity (and possibly some discussion), I have prepared a few case studies:

1) One seriously overweight joker, who probably has to be weighed on multiple cattle scales. Subject plods into the the egg chamber (probably thinking it is some exotic all-you can eat buffet), but does the face-hugger take one for the team knowing that the alien he deposits might not be able to burrow his way through that mountain of flesh?  Does the face-hugger do risk analysis of the likelihood of its embryo surviving the "birth"...?

2. The Not-quite-right dude....Yeah, you know the guy at work that when you look him in the eyes, you realize "the lights are on, but nobody's home..." Can the face-hugger sense that it's about to latch itself onto a person who's about as likely to toss himself in front of a city bus as he is to go on a rant about the Bigfoot/UFO connection at the Monday morning meeting? Can it sense psychosis that may present a danger to the spore...?

3. The self-medicated type. And by Self-medicated, I don't mean doctor prescribed. If it has a stupid street-name like "Nuke", "Earthquake", or "Taze Them Testicles", this individual has tried it and even posted reviews on Yahoo. Would a face-hugger find this walking meth lab as a suitable host? Or would it upon realizing that mixing an alien spore with this chemical concoction might result in an explosion that could destroy the universe, and therefore keep it's proboscis where it belongs?.

Things that make you go HHMMMMMM...

Well I hope I didn't offend anyone with my case studies...If I did, blame it on poor home-training. You can, however,email me, and I will spank myself and issue you a half-hearted apology. Love this forum and all of your comments. Everyone have a great night!