Cordyceps

The Last of Us co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann validate a fan theory regarding how the mutant Cordyceps fungus' spread across the world.

Mazin and Druckmann discussed the challenges of translating the game into a live-action series in a previous interview, insisting that they strived to always remain true to the spirit of the source material. "One of the things that I loved hearing from Craig and HBO very early on was, 'Let's take out all the violence except for the very essential,'" Druckmann recalled. The pair confirmed in January 2023 that the She asks where it happened, and the guy says a flour factory on the west side of the city. We are absolutely talking about -- there is the world's largest flour mill in Jakarta -- so that's a fine theory and I think people should keep running with it." "We liked the idea of that science, and we try as best we can to make sure that our research all connects.

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 Cordyceps infection wreaked havoc in The Last Us's premiere, all but destroying civilization and turning its unfortunate victims into zombie-like creatures ...

While you wait for the next episode, see our guide to all the upcoming [new TV shows](https://www.gamesradar.com/new-tv-shows/) to fill out your watchlist. A mycologist in Indonesia is taken to a high security facility to investigate a deceased victim of Cordyceps and is told that the mysterious illness began at a flour factory. "Everything we saw in the game was from three characters' perspective – [Joel's daughter] Sarah, Joel and Ellie, that's it. Now, we get to see a bit more of how this thing started." Added Mazin: "When she talks about where these people worked and what was going on in that factory – yeah, it's pretty clear that's what's going on. But, where exactly the outbreak started was left a mystery – and episode 2 has finally filled in the blanks.

Only a certain type of the cordyceps — known as ophiocordyceps fungi — has the capabilities for a hostile takeover of a specific insect within the nearby ...

[a fungal species capable of infecting humans](https://nypost.com/2022/10/28/potentially-deadly-fungal-infections-climb-during-covid-pandemic-who-says/), was discovered and later spread to three continents. “It came out of nowhere,” Arturo Casadevall, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health infectious disease expert, told National Geographic. “In a fantastical way, the logical links are there, but it’s not likely to happen in real life … The parasite first causes erratic behavior inside of a host. Out of the estimated 600 ophiocordyceps fungi, only 35 are known to have zombie-making abilities, per Araújo. “The idea is that this fungus was out there, and over the years it adapted to higher temperatures until it could break through.”

"Candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus: any one of them could be capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control of not millions of us, but billions.".

"There's no evidence they're causing disease in humans. "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." "What really is the most removed from the current status quo is the scale and the rate of the infections occurring in The Last Of Us," says Prof Bignell. "They are predominantly insect pathogens. It kills more than 100,000 people a year in sub-Saharan Africa. "Most fungi in the environment are used to growing in more temperate conditions, and it places quite a strain on any microorganism to counteract an immune response in a human body and cope with the high temperature."

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.

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.

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).

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.