The Last of Us, based on the video game franchise of the same name, has captivated audiences worldwide since its debut.
The HBO post-apocalyptic thriller follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl who must travel a land ravaged by infected people who have changed into terrible animals.
In the series, the fungus infection that causes the pandemic is named Cordyceps, and episode 2 goes into greater detail on how it spread in the first place, when the initial outbreak happened in 2003.
Christine Hakim joins the cast as Dr. Ibu Ratna, a mycology professor who emphasises how terrible the situation was when she discovered Cordyceps was spreading among humans.
Could a fungal epidemic of this magnitude occur in real life? Here’s what the researchers had to say.
Could The Last Of Us actually happen and what is Cordyceps fungus?
While many post-apocalyptic shows appear to be based on fantastical ideas about the end of the world as we know it, The Last of Us is based on genuine science.
Cordyceps is a type of parasitic fungus, within which there are hundreds of species.
The form of Cordyceps that causes the pandemic in The Last of Us is known as Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, often known as zombie-ant fungus.
In an article published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2020, the authors wrote: ‘The parasitic fungus manipulates its ant victims to behave like “zombies,” walking randomly and displaying convulsions that make them fall down, after which the ants climb up vegetation to bite the underside of leaves or twigs.
‘After the ant dies, the fungus continues to grow inside the body, and the fungus’s fruiting body sprouts from the back of the ant’s head. After one or two weeks, the fungus produces spores from the fruiting body and rupture, releasing the spores to the forest floor below.
‘Each spore has the potential to infect other unfortunate ants, turning them into zombie ants that allow the fungus to continue to propagate.’
While the ‘logical links are there’ in The Last of Us of fungi being able to infect people one day – which is currently not conceivable – Ian Will, a fungal geneticist at the University of Central Florida, told National Geographic: ‘It’s not likely to happen in real life.’
The first episode of The Last of Us begins with an epidemiologist named Dr Neuman (John Hannah) hypothesising in the 1960s about the threat that a fungal infection could pose to the human population, stating: ‘Fungi cannot survive if its host’s internal temperature is higher than 94 degrees. And there are currently no reasons for fungus to adapt in order to endure greater temperatures.
‘But what if that were to change? What if, for instance, the world were to get slightly warmer? Well, now there is reason to evolve.’
After warning that there would be no remedies or preventatives in this possibility, arguing that it wouldn’t be feasible to manufacture them, he then ominously warns that if that were to happen, then ‘we lose’.
João Araújo, an expert on parasitic fungi at the New York Botanical Garden, told National Geographic that ‘if the fungus really wanted to infect mammals it would require millions of years of genetic changes,’, while geneticist Ian admitted that the ‘idea that temperature plays a role in fungal infections is certainly reasonable’.
Professor Elaine Bignell, a leader in the field of human fungal pathogen research, told Sky News: ‘We have to be in a state of preparedness.
‘We have to have a very good understanding of how different fungi can cause human diseases, how our immune systems cope with those microbes, and a good medicine cabinet with antifungal agents we know are effective.’
The professor also explained: ‘Some fungi can get passed from one person to the next – and in the environment we are exposed to them all the time –but it would take a very significant variant to be able to cause the sorts of species extinction event that they’re dramatising.’
How to watch The Last Of Us
The Last of Us airs on HBO in the US, and Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK.
Episodes are released in the UK at 2am GMT, and are then available to watch on demand afterwards.
The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released on Mondays.