Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/HBO, gailhampshire/Wikimedia Commons, Björn S…/Wikimedia Commons and Antrodia/Wikimedia Commons
There’s no shortage of excitement around the season finale of HBO’s The Last of Us, airing Sunday evening. The nine-episode television adaption of the popular video game follows the story of a middle-aged man and a 14-year-old girl trudging through a post-apocalyptic America, ravaged by zombies who’ve been infected by a fungus that takes over host brains and causes them to become mindlessly aggressive. Most of humanity has been wiped out. Without any cures or effective treatments, the show paints a bleak picture of a fungal pandemic.
It is, of course, science fiction. Many zombie horror stories explain the rise of the undead or the transformation of still-living humans into hyper-aggressive violent beasts through as being the result of some kind of pathogen. The Last of Us is no exception—taking inspiration from the parasitic Ophiocordyceps unilateralis species of fungus that’s known to take control of ants’ brains. The species is related to the Cordyceps genus, from which the zombie fungus in The Last of Us derives.
Fear not. Death by zombie fungus isn’t something you should be worried about. But the show’s popularity has raised the question in the last few months: Could a pandemic caused by a fungus really help decimate the human species?