The Cordyceps from “The Last of Us” is a real mushroom and also creates zombies

There are already too many works where zombies have become the ultimate terror to humanity, and this has almost driven them to extinction. ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ or of course ‘Resident Evil’ are some of the most famous stories. However, “The Last of Us” has something much more terrifying, cordyceps, a real fungus that is transforming even beings without conscience.

As can be seen at the beginning of the HBO series, and is explained in the video game, in ‘The Last of Us’ cordyceps is a mushroom which has caused devastation around the world. It is a parasite of fungal origin that has begun to reproduce among animals, but on Earth it has been given the conditions to evolve and now it infects people by turning them into zombies.

But both in the game and in the series, Neil Druckmann was inspired by the real mushroom called Cordyceps ‘The Last of Us’. In the program played by Pedro Pascal, this fungus enters the human body and takes possession of the brain, taking control of all the functions of the organism, and gradually depriving them of their humanity, until it transforms them into a hive that can continue reproduction more parasites.

In the In real life, Cordyceps also make zombies., only this time it can’t infect humans. This infection is found in the animal kingdom, especially in insects, it reaches their brains, takes them to a high place where they can die and infect more beings, and in the process, the fungus’s ramifications are coming out of the whole body, until eventually they eventually die within a few days.

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At the beginning of the “The Last of Us” series, we heard the scientist explain that, at some point, conditions on Earth, i.e. the global temperature, could cause the fungus to mutate until it infects humans, which was the main reason he hadn’t done it so far. However, the real-life scenario appears to be just as terrifying.

Utrecht University biology expert Dr. Charissa de Bekker said conditions due to climate change and global warming are currently creating the environment where fungi can infect humans, just like the two scientists explain at the beginning of the series: “ Most mushrooms, at least the ones we know, like to live at much lower temperatures than our bodies. Our bodies just aren’t great hosts to infect, because the temperature would be so high.”

“However, with climate change and the planet getting hotter, fungi also need to evolve and adapt to higher temperatures. Its ideal temperature may be close to that of our body, making it increasingly possible for us to get fungal infections in the future,” said the scientist.