The Last of Us
, the HBO series based on the popular video game franchise by writer Neil Druckmann, focuses on a different type of infection:
fungal, that is, caused by fungi, not viruses.
Unlike
The Walking Dead
or
Resident Evil
, in which the dead are brought back to life, or
28 Days Later
, in which a virus turns its hosts extremely violent,
The Last of Us
's
Cordyceps fungus
takes over the people's brains.
This fungus takes over humanity in a dystopian future,
growing spongy masses inside bodies and sprouting from the eyes and forehead.
The protagonists of this fantastic story of a devastated future.
Photo/ HBO Max
"The Last of Us": the series where mushrooms end
humanity
In the HBO series,
humans remain alive as the infection spreads through bites
, and over the course of a weekend, the global warming-induced mutation of the fungus appears to have traveled the globe.
In the first episode of
The Last of Us
, 20 years have passed without any progress being made against the fungal threat, which is due to the real-life similarities between fungi.
In the specialized site
Medical Sciences
, Dr. Ilan Schwartz, from the Duke University School of Medicine, specializing in immunocompromised hosts and invasive fungal infections, points out that "our cells are much more complex than, for example, bacteria, and fungi are more related to people than to bacteria that cause infections."
"The Last Of Us".
The franchise of HBO's new apocalyptic drama opens on Sunday the 15th.
Dr. Schwartz added why there are only three antifungal agents compared to "many more classes of antibiotics. We have the problem that
our adversary is closely related, and what that means is that the cellular machinery is the same as ours
. "
There are far fewer targets for antifungals to work with, to selectively cause damage to fungal cells without causing damage to human cells."
From these commonalities, plus the uncomfortable framework of climate change and the grotesqueness of the infected in
The Last of Us
, raised the question:
to what extent should humanity be afraid of Cordyceps or any other fungal infection at large? scale?
Could a fungus wipe out humanity?
The plot of
The Last of Us
was inspired by a 2008
Planet Earth
segment Druckmann watched about how the parasitic fungus
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
takes over the body of a bullet ant and then grows out of the ant's head to continue spreading.
There, narrator David Attenborough explains in
Planet Earth
how there are thousands of different kinds of parasitic fungus, each focused on a specific species, with textured spores, neon-orange poufs, and long gray tendrils that emerge from moths and dead beetles.
Although Ophiocordyceps and Cordyceps are different genres,
The Last of Us
was influenced by the latter and references the former in its storytelling.
In the video game
The Last of Us
, the Cordyceps infection is partially spread via airborne spores, forcing uninfected characters to wear gas masks.
Joel and Ellie are survivors of a pandemic that causes humans to mutate into cannibals.
Dr. David P. Hughes of Pennsylvania State University, a Cordyceps specialist and science advisor on the 2013 video game, noted that
the fungus attaches itself as a spore to the body of a host ant
, tunnels into it through throughout a day and creates an interior web so that almost 50% of the ant's body is covered with fungus.
In the HBO series, however, the spores are abandoned—probably so the cast wouldn't have to hide behind masks all the time—in favor of the mouth tentacles,
and one bite from an infected person can turn someone into as only five minutes.
The tendency of the infected to nibble on whoever's nearby doesn't deter comparisons to zombies,
but fungi spread through bites are not uncommon in the wild.
As
an example, this scenario is similar to how the fungus Sporothrix brasiliensis is transferred and causes the infection sporotrichosis.
Sporothrix brasiliensis, a dysmorphic fungus that can exist as mold and yeast, can be breathed in as spores from contaminated plant matter or spread through cat scratches and bites, and is becoming more common in Brazil.
This fungus "causes thousands of infections a year. If one of those cats were imported elsewhere and scratched other cats, there's a chance that this fungus could spread around the world," Dr. Schwartz said.
Cordyceps can't infect humans yet, but
spores of other fungi that live in the soil and in animal droppings can, and are a legitimate danger to immunosuppressed people.
Additionally, some fungi can spit out thousands of spores at a time as they travel inches through the air.
That is to say that the scenario of this disease is possible.
Although several factors should be combined.
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