Series The Last of Usadapted from the video game, tells more about how Cordyceps began to infect humans.
From the first episode, the adaptation of The Last of Us manages to extend the narrative web built in the game. Before projecting us into its post-apocalyptic world to follow the fate of Joel and Ellie, the HBO series immerses us in a sudden, brutal end of the world. This sequence of events is essentially the same as in the game. With one detail: before the credits, the adaptation begins with a sequence located in the 1960s.
We watch a TV show, during which an epidemiologist (played by John Hannah) warns of the risks posed, according to him, by fungi. It details how some of them can infect the brains of hosts and modify their behavior to spread before killing them. However, the pandemic at the origin of the zombie apocalypse, in The Last of Us, is related to Cordyceps. This kind of mushrooms does exist. It is an entomopathogenic parasite: it notably infects insects, such as ants. Except that, in the game, it has mutated in a relatively inexplicable way until it affects humans – and transforms them into “infected”, into ferocious zombies.
Newspaper clippings present in the game then suggested contamination having taken place in particular through food – the FDA, the food regulatory body in the United States, would have attempted numerous “recalls” of batches to limit infection. But without success: the incubation of Cordyceps is between a few hours and two days, a pandemic too fast to be contained, a fortiori because the infected are fast and aggressive.
how the world of The Last of Us did it come to this? The intro sequence delivers an unsettling response that only heightens the drama depicted.
The Last of Us and global warming
During the television sequence, the scientist explains that such a fungus cannot infect humans to date, because it is not able to survive the high temperatures of our body. Then he qualifies: if the Earth were to warm up, then a fungus could adapt to higher temperatures and become quite viable in the human body. According to him, in these circumstances, humanity would have no chance of getting out of it.
” If the world were to warm up just a little, then it could cause evolution. Candida, ergot, Cordyceps, Aspergillosis — any of them might be able to burrow into our brains and take over not millions of us, but billions. Billions of poisoned mind puppets… and there is no cure for it, no way to prevent it. They don’t exist, it’s not even possible to make them. »
If Cordyceps caused the zombie apocalypse of The Last of Usis because of global warming. This means that the threat has always been there, latent, just waiting for a trigger — one more degree. In the subtext of this narrative choice: the post-apocalytic world of The Last of Us was caused by mankind. The tragedy is only worse.
Episode 1 of The Last of Us is available on Prime Video in France since January 16.
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