Can ‘The Last of Us’ Fungus Pandemic Happen in Real Life?

Taken to the screens as an adaptation of the eponymous game by Naughty Dog, the series ‘The Last of Us’ reached the catalog of HBO Max last Sunday, the 15th, introducing the characters Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) wrapped in the post-apocalyptic plot created by Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann in 2013.

History shows that the earth has its existence threatened by a fungal pandemic that emerged 20 years ago after the mutation of a fungus called Cordyceps. This organism mysteriously infected a large part of the population, and by controlling the nervous system of the hosts, it almost brought human life to an end.

This is because the fungus continues to grow inside the body of the infected person, and those who harbor the organisms inside themselves begin to act violently in search of new hosts for the fungus, as they become vehicles of transmission, passing the parasite on. to other bodies through bites, — really like a zombie.

Although the plot is fictional, Neil Druckmann was inspired to develop the story a fungal parasite that actually exists and receives the fame of ‘zombie fungus’, the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.

Ophiocordyceps what?

Often just called Cordyceps, the fungus was discovered in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. This type of parasite targets insects, as the Correio Brasiliense points out, which states that the main victims of the fungus are carpenter ants, from the componutus tribe that live in America, Europe and Africa.

The above information was discovered by Druckmann while he watched the 2008 documentary ‘Planet Earth’, where the fungus parasitizes the body of an ant and continues to develop inside the insect’s organism, spreading out from the animal’s head.

It’s real – it’s real insofar as whatever he says the fungus does, they do. And they currently do this and have been doing this forever. There are some notable documentaries that you can watch that are quite terrifying”, said Craig Mazin, the series’ screenwriter, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, reaffirming that the inspiration for the creation of ‘The Last of Us’ has scientific foundations.

Also, in the same chat, mazin raised the question that has haunted game lovers for some time. “Now your warning – what if they evolve and get into us? “From a purely scientific point of view, would they do to us exactly what they do to ants?” he asked.

The answer is in science

Although the fungus exists in the animal world, the chance of it causing the same effects on the human population seen in the game and in the series are extremely low, as explained by experts in an article published by Variety.

This is because the possibility of something similar happening outside of screens depends on a readaptation of fungi to survive at higher temperatures, since, according to the professor at Penn State University, in Pennsylvania, David P. Hughesmost fungi live in temperatures colder than the approximate 37°C of the human being.

And this is really the case with Cordyceps, as it is found mainly in tropical and subtropical forests, in addition to which it prefers to parasitize ectothermic animals, that is, living beings that are not able to warm up.

Hugheswho specializes in Cordyceps, raised yet another factor that hinders the existence of a pandemic caused by the ‘zombie fungus’ when he stated that it would be very difficult for any parasite to have total control of the human nervous system.

The theory agrees with the thinking of Ilan Schwartzprofessor at the Duke University School of Medicine, in the United States, since in the opinion of the specialist in immunocompromised hosts and invasive fungal infections, it would not be possible for the parasite to adapt in the human body because “our cells are much more complex than those of other beings”.