HBO series, The Last of Us It has been widely accepted and successful worldwide, becoming one of the most popular at the moment and surpassing House of the Dragon in Latin America.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!—–>>
If you are not up to date with The Last of Us series, continue reading at your own risk…
The series adaptation of HBO from The Last of Us, takes place 20 years after a fungal pandemic has destroyed modern civilization: what the video game calls the Cordyceps brain infection. Inspired by real-life science, the show’s Cordyceps fungus threat is explained in a prologue set against the backdrop of a 1968 talk show.
So 35 years later, in September 2003, the CBI outbreak causes the spread of the zombie-like “Infected”: humans infected with the fungus. Cordyceps that mutate into different strains and stages of Infected, including “Runners”, “Stalkers”, “Clickers”…
The basis of his story began in 1968, when epidemiologists dr schoenheiss (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Dr Neuman (John Hannah) weigh the potential of a viral pandemic. Schoenheiss worries that an airborne virus could spread around the world in a matter of weeks and “the whole world gets sick at the same time.”
Neuman responds: “Humanity has been at war against the virus since the beginning. Sometimes millions of people die, just like in a real war. But in the end, we always win.”
What is infection in The Last of Us?
While microorganisms pose a threat to humanity, it’s not bacteria or viruses that Neuman is concerned about: it’s fungi. Neuman explains that there are some fungi that do not seek to kill, but to control. The psychedelic drug LSD comes from ergot, a fungus, as does psilocybin, a key substance in mind-altering psychedelic mushrooms.
“Viruses can make us sick, but fungi can alter our minds. There is a fungus that infects insects. It gets inside an ant, for example, travels through its circulatory system to the ant’s brain and then floods it. with hallucinogens, thus bending the ant’s mind to its will,” Neuman explains.
“The fungus starts directing the ant’s behavior, telling it where to go, what to do, like a puppeteer with a puppet. And it gets worse. The fungus needs food to live, so it starts eating its host from the inside, replacing the ant’s flesh with its own, but does not let its victim die. Instead, the fungus ‘keeps its puppet alive by preventing decomposition.'”
Dr. Schoenheiss argues that “fungal infection of this type is real, but not in humans.” Neuman points out that fungi cannot survive if their host’s internal temperature exceeds 94 degrees. As of 1968, there is no reason for fungi to evolve to be able to withstand higher temperatures. So if that were to change, Neuman posits, global warming could speed up evolution.
“One gene mutates and an ascomycete, candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus, any one of them could become able to burrow into our brain and take control,” Neuman warns. “Not millions of us, but billions of us. Billions of puppets with poisoned minds permanently fixed on one unifying goal: to spread the infection to every last living human by any means necessary.”
“Worse: there is no treatment, no preventative. No cures. “They don’t exist. You can’t even create them,” Neuman tells a studio audience transfixed with his lesson, almost zombie-like. “So if that happens? We lose.”
