Greetings freaks and geeks, I hope you’re all succeeding in your conquests and dark triumphs untold; in other words, I hope you’re all having a friggin’ lovely day uwu.
I recently binged watched the HBO series The Last of Us and not going to lie, the fungal infection shebang is an incredibly unsettling idea. I love it in terms of being a fan of zombie shows and horror in general, but in terms of reality, is it possible?
The Last of Us series is based on an action-adventure video game of the same name that was released in 2013 and developed by Naughty Dog. Live-action movies and series based on video games don’t historically have the best track record for being, ya know, actually good (my exception is Arcane, it is a MASTERPIECE) but The Last of Us is proving to be a very good bad time and by that, I mean that it’s a great show but it will sucker-punch you in the feels. Repeatedly. Seriously, it doesn’t stop. So that’s nice.
Let’s talk about the first scene of the first episode, where a couple of epidemiologists are speaking on a talkshow. I don’t think I’ve ever been as effectively captured by the first few minutes of a show in a very long time, if ever. Probably a part of that is due to the show coming out post-2020 so the minute one hears “Virus similar to influenza”, it kinda triggers your “oh shit, what now?” instinct.
When the other epidemiologist pooh-poohs the prospect of a viral pandemic, it feels pretty reductive. And then he explains why.
Fungal infections.
Take the one from the show, cordyceps. That’s actually based on a real thing called “zombie ant-fungus” or Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis for short. In real life, it only affects ants. The fungus attaches to the host, controls its body like a tiny ant-puppet and gets it to leave its nest to warmer, more humid environments more suited to the fungus like the forest floor and has the ant attach its mandibles to something like a major vein on the underside of a leaf, where it will remain until it eventually shrivels up and dies (like a boss.)
Here’s the good news: Luckily it would take thousands of years of evolution for ol’ cordyceps to affect humans, if it even could even tackle something as comparatively advanced as our brains and our internal body temperature usually runs at about 37 degrees celsius on average, and that’s way too hot for zombie ant-fungus.
The bad news? Well, there’s new evidence to suggest humans are cooling down and our actual average body temperature has become 36.5 degrees celsius and is dropping around every decade or so. Plus, with climate change and rising temperatures, some fungi may evolve to warmer temperatures. There are a few fungi that already affect and kill humans (like Candida yeast, Candida Auris, Cryptococcus Neoformans, etc.) and that number has been rising in the past half-century.
So mushroom zombie apocalypse? No, we’re not in danger of that any time soon but regardless maybe we should be a little nervous about fungi. And you should definitely tell people about this at parties, I guarantee they’ll love it and it won’t make things morbid and awkward at all, trust me.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-human-body-temperatures-cooling-down/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/cryptococcus-neoformans
https://theconversation.com/the-last-of-us-fungal-infections-really-can-kill-and-theyre-getting-more-dangerous-198184#:~:text=But%20a%20few%20species%20of,conditions%20(such%20as%20cancer).
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/02/07/the-last-of-us-minus-the-zombie-part-how-fungi-could-become-supercharged-by-climate-change#:~:text=Rising%20global%20temperatures%20are%20predicted,the%20human%20fungal%20pathogen%20Cryptococcus.
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/the-last-of-us-apocalypse-is-not-realistic-but-rising-threat-of-fungal-pathogens-is/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-the-zombie-fungus-in-tvs-the-last-of-us-really-infect-people/
https://www.today.com/health/disease/last-of-us-pandemic-fungus-rcna72072