Cordyceps

2023 - 1 - 23

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Den of Geek US"

The Last of Us Just Answered a Big Question About Cordyceps (Den of Geek US)

Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us episode 2 Photo: Liane Hentscher | HBO. This article contains spoilers through The ...

For starters, Joel is following the low-carb Atkins diet (which was popular in the early 2000s and was the “keto” of its day) and therefore rejects their neighbors’ offer of a biscuit. Robert Atkins would be the ultimate hero of a mushroom apocalypse? We know that thanks to the events of episode 1 (and the very premise of the show). That very same episode also features a news report in the background that warns of concerning developments in Jakarta just to set up this second episode reveal. Of course, not every single person in the world was infected because not every single person consumed flour product in late September 2003. The Last of Us episode 2 acknowledges this fact when the military reveals to Ibu Ratna that the first infected individuals were discovered at a “flour and grain factory on the west side of the city.” Unfortunately, the government has no idea who first bit their specimen and 14 total workers have gone missing from that same factory. That leads us into one of The Last of Us‘s most clever bit of background storytelling yet. The only “treatment” possible to is to bomb the city of Jakarta into oblivion. But still some major mysteries about the infection lingered in the context of [The Last of Us](https://www.denofgeek.com/the-last-of-us/). Regardless of where the infection was first observed, the end result was always going to be the same: near total annihilation of the human race. [episode 2 of the series](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-last-of-us-episode-2-review) answers at least one of those questions right from the get go. [the unfortunately real fungus](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-last-of-us-the-cordyceps-brain-infection-explained/) (and subsequent Google image search revealing it commandeering tiny ant bodies) was enough to answer that.

Can Cordyceps infect humans? The Last Of Us vs real life according ... (HITC)

Can Cordyceps infect humans? The fungus in The Last Of Us is what creates a post-apocalyptic Earth but is it a real life threat?

For those wondering, mycology is the name attributed to the study of fungi, which has resulted in the development of important drugs such as tetracycline and penicillin. Spreading from ant to human is just such a big jump.” “Everything in the human body is so different from the insects that these fungi normally infect, including our physiology, our nervous tissue, and our body temperature. She continued: “These fungi evolved strategies to manipulate specific insect hosts over millions and millions of years. Planes fall from the sky as frantic members of the public duck and dive to avoid the debris. Perhaps one of the most startling elements of the first episode was how grounded the chaos felt.

The Last of Us Hints That Cordyceps May Have Been Hiding in Flour ... (Esquire.com)

While the video game doesn't give us much info about the origins of cordyceps, the HBO series has one major theory.

And no, we're not talking about [The Kiss](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a42618596/the-last-of-us-tess-death-show-vs-video-game/). [Episode Two](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a42594936/the-last-of-us-episode-2-recap/) took things... According to the show's creators—Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (who also created the game)—the answer is yes. [HBO's The Last of Us television adaptation](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a42443510/the-last-of-us-review-hbo/), it's clear that we'll learn a little bit more about the cordyceps infection. [The Last of Us ](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32907593/last-of-us-part-2-review-ellie-abby/) [games](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32907593/last-of-us-part-2-review-ellie-abby/), you don't really know much, per se, about the ravenous, horrifying, overgrown mushroom people you're fighting for hours on end. Episode One began in the 1960s, with two doctors talking about the fungus—which is benign in our world, unless [you're an ant](https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=74968X1525077&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalgeographic.com%2Fanimals%2Farticle%2Fcordyceps-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants)—and its potential to spread throughout the body and brain of a human.

How Cordyceps Found Its Ground Zero in 'The Last of Us', Explained (esquire.com)

There's no cure and seemingly only one solution. Well, if you can call it that...

The game has a different ground zero for the fungi getting into the food chain, and it’s based in South America. When Joel and his daughter Sarah are living in Austin, we read a copy of the Texas Herald with the headline: ‘Admittance spikes at area hospitals! Showrunner Craig Mazin then revealed in a podcast that there were a lot of “breadcrumbs” in the episode to discover. Her bitten colleagues were then executed, but the professor sagely notes that the person who bit her was still on the loose, as well as 14 other co-workers. Hazmat-suited up, she probes the female cadaver, finding a human bite on her leg. Joel is on the Atkins diet (similar to the keto with no carbs).

Last of Us' creators explain Cordyceps mushroom zombies ... (Polygon)

HBO's Last of Us TV show makes some changes from the game, the biggest being spores. Here's how the mushroom network works to connect a mass amount of ...

The Last of Us can be a hard watch in that regard, and potentially a reason why the concept of spores was axed in favor of a mushroom network. The pieces we see are the fruiting bodies of the whole organism; the rest lies hidden underneath the surface of the Earth. It’s no longer enough simply to stay stealthy and quiet — one wrong move could mean activating a network of monsters that move en masse and know your exact location. It’s just something that happens: gas masks on and then gas masks off. Individual infected people join the “network” as spindly tendrils grow into an opening in their body, often a bite. [The Last of Us](https://www.polygon.com/gaming/23552202/last-of-us-greatest-video-game-status) writer and co-creator Neil Druckmann told Polygon. Mushrooms have a map of the world that’s invisible to anyone else; their only goal is spreading the fungus. It’s a concept based on the real-life science of mushrooms: We see mushrooms when they burst through dirt. Spores serve the games’ eerie atmosphere well: With the right light, you can see spores spilling out from cracked doors, a warning of the danger that lies within. Spores are out, and the mushroom network is in. You can’t have your main characters’ faces hidden behind a bulky mask; this isn’t [The Mandalorian](https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/13/20959862/star-wars-watch-order-disney-plus-movies-shows-chronological-skywalker-saga), after all. For that logistical reason, we were like, Let’s find a different vector.”

Why HBO's The Last of Us Changed the Cordyceps' Spores to Tendrils (CBR)

The Last of Us co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann explain a key alteration to how the Cordyceps pandemic spreads in the HBO adaptation.

The pair said that the opening flashback in The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 2, "Infected," was intended as a "pretty explicit" hint that the mutated fungus spread throughout the world via contaminated flour. That’s part of the fun of adaptation, and leaving these blurry edges of the map for our characters to discover as the adventure continues." Somewhat ironically, Baker's [live-action counterpart Pedro Pascal](https://www.cbr.com/pedro-pascal-ignored-instructions-not-to-play-the-last-of-us-video-game/) previously admitted he ignored instructions not to play the game, as he felt it was vital preparation for the role. Mazin added that The Last of Us series still contains references to spores, despite adding tendrils to the mythos. But for the more recently infected, we had a lot of conversations about what else can we do with the vector other than bites." "But we had talked about how we're in a genre that's popular, and there are a lot of different versions of stories of an outbreak.

What Is the Fungus in 'The Last of Us'? Cordyceps Virus Explained (Distractify)

With the entire world having incorporated quarantine culture and the pandemic lifestyle into their daily routines, a show about a highly contagious ...

In the show, the Cordyceps behave much like a zombie virus. Still, the fact that this disease draws so heavily from nature is enough to make our skin crawl. Fearing the Cordyceps' inevitable spread among human populations, she tragically urges the Indonesian military to bomb the city and destroy everyone in it to stop the virus. In Jakarta, Indonesia, mycology professor Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim) is approached by local authorities to examine the corpse of a flour factory worker who attacked her co-workers before getting killed. The virus in question behaves much like fungus, in that mold and mushroom-like growths develop all over an infected individual. According to real-life mycology professor Mark Ramsdale via Sky News, there are over