This is a good place to jump in and say welcome Jmbern1. you will do well on the bass and you don’t need to pluck with your thumb.
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If you can thump on slap bass, you’re pretty well covered 
In my experience, there’s only one scenario that could be problematic: palm muting without a pick. I personally do use my thumb a lot on that, sort of like Josh does here: Cool Bass Technique for Chords, Palm Muting, and Great Tone! - Thumb and Fingers Plucking - YouTube
It’s just one technique amongst the many, many techniques you might want to use. I’m going to talk about possible ways to do it with that movement limitation you mentioned, but that absolutely does not mean you MUST use it. I just use it myself because that’s kinda my sound (p bass, flatwounds, foam/palm muting).
If you want to get something similar to that tone without the thumb, I guess you could try:
- playing softly with a pick. Won’t be quite the same, though… so
- …play with your index nail part (picture holding a pick without a the pick… does that make sense?). In this case, you could even wrap your index nail with some tape if you absolutely must get rid of the bright pick-like sound. This can also hurt your finger a bit on roundwounds.
- Use your thumb as if it was a pick
You could possibly keep it fixed and just do the hand motion, as if playing with a pick.
Since you mentioned having a guitar background, I assume all this pick playing should be fairly natural to you.
Having said all that, do not get too worried about it. It’s definitely one of the least frequent types of motions you’d need. Plus, one of the beauties of bass is how many different ways of playing it and sounds you can get, so you have plenty to explore, including ways to emulate that type of playing if you really want to.
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Hi Everyone,
Thanks so much for all your responses. I really appreciate it. This has been a bit of a difficult journey with this injury, and the inability to play guitar was a big blow. However, it seems that bass playing may actually work out ok, which is really exciting. I am going to start the beginner course since it looks really good. Thanks again for the encouraging replies.
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It’s a great course, and I’m sure you will get a lot out of it. We are always here for you if you have any questions.
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As a guitar player I’m sure you’re familiar with palm muting. If you watch a bass player using their thumb and fingers to pluck, you’ll notice they are virtually always doing palm muting. It’s that muted sound they are going for.
The good news is there’s the old school way of doing this that doesn’t require palm muting. You just take a piece of scrap foam and cram it under the strings at the bridge. This is the way it was done back in the day, before some guitar techniques spilled over to the bass. 
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Strumming through this topic I noticed nobody mentioned playing some chords. So I will note that the whole anchor and mute system is the major use of my thumb, especially on six string bass.
but I also use my thumb on some chords using a knob turning motion. That’s mostly just some crazy motorhead tracks and the like. Granted you don’t even have to play chords as long as you hit roots if your ok with the sound, and of course there are other methods to playing them.
Sorry for bringing up an old topic again. just thought I’d get my two cents in on the matter of thumb use.
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don’t be sorry, old topics never die, they just fade away…
I use that same motion sometimes, but just messing around, either on the same string, or between two, but it is just when I am F’ing around.
I may see how I can work it into some playing sometime.
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I mostly use it as I stated with Motorhead type tracks. There are a lot of three string chords. and I have a hard time strumming with my ring finger unless doing a three finger galop as with many Iron Maiden Songs. And those tend to be single string galops not really multi string plucking’s. if any of that makes sense.
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Perfect
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