While HBO’s new series, The Last of Us, portrays a classic zombie apocalypse in many ways, it’s mushrooms, rather than a biological or chemical weapon, that turn people into zombies this time around. As the series began airing, viewers began to wonder if there could be a fungal epidemic in real life. The answer to this came from scientists.“A fungal outbreak is certainly possible,” Norman Van Rhijn, a mycologist at the University of Manchester who studies fungal infections, told Business Insider.
No fungal species currently known to the scientific community poses an immediate epidemic threat to humans, especially as the series depicts. Still, fungal infections are on the rise worldwide, and researchers are concerned that more and more people are at risk. Some even worry that new super-pathogens may emerge through fungi.
Tom Chiller, head of the fungal disease division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Insider, “The potential for what can come out and become a pathogen is huge. More fungi will emerge as human pathogens, harder to treat and more contagious. It won’t surprise me.” said.
Mushrooms really turn into zombies
The zombies in The Last of Us sprout with branches of a fungus called Cordyceps. These branches sprout from the heads and mouths of the infected and extend to new victims. Cordyceps is scientifically true, but only takes over insects – most famously ants. The captured ant climbs higher and spreads itself farther, releasing fungal spores higher up.On the other hand, Cordyceps cannot infect us because it cannot develop at human body temperature. However, some types of fungi produce psychoactive chemicals and can affect human behavior. Species known as magic mushrooms can make people hallucinate.
Fungal diseases can be transmitted from animals to humans. But for a fungus like Cordyceps to be able to mutate enough to make the giant leap from insects to humans and effectively manipulate behavior is a far-fetched idea. On the other hand, Tom Chiller underlines that nothing is impossible in the world of infectious diseases. “Ant and human are dramatically different from one another,” Chiller said. We have immune systems, we live in different temperatures, our body temperature is much higher. So there are some fundamental challenges that mushroom has to overcome.”
No vaccine for deadly fungi
Just like in The Last of Us, there is no vaccine or medicine for lethal fungi in our world. Only a few classes of drugs exist to treat deadly fungal infections, and they are not always considered a safe treatment. In fact, because fungi are very similar to humans at the cellular level, many of the drugs that fight them are also toxic to the human body. According to the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections, fungi kill more people than malaria.
Some deadly fungi, such as Candida auris, which emerged in 2009, have developed a strong resistance to the antifungal drugs we have. According to the World Health Organization, Candida auris killed between 29 and 53 percent of its victims.In the HBO series, zombies must bite their victims or pass on mushroom sprouts to spread the disease. In real life, this transmission is largely through contact. Therefore, Hughes does not think that fungi pose an epidemic threat.
Rising temperatures may increase threat from fungal pathogens
Mysteriously, Candida auris outbreaks occurred independently on three different continents simultaneously in the 2010s. No clear link or contact was found between the outbreaks. Some scientists point to climate change and rising temperatures as the cause. Fungi, which adapted to the temperatures, may have become viable in the human body.
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