HBO’s adaptation of the popular video game The Last of Us has been a massive hit. Garnering praise from critics and fans, the post-apocalyptic drama about an unlikely duo’s journey through a land decimated by a fungus outbreak has broken records.
In the show people are turned into grotesque, human mushrooms thanks to a fungi that grows inside their bodies. It takes over their minds and turns them into a violent, blood thirsty zombie-like creature that spreads the disease by biting others.
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The show takes place 20 years after the initial outbreak which turns the world upside down in just two days. In the show Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, is a jaded and cynical courier who is hired to smuggle a mouthy 14-year-old girl called Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, out of an oppressive quarantine zone.
What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal and heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse the US and depend on each other for survival.
How realistic is the infection in the Last of Us and could it happen in real life?
As explained in the show the the parasitic fungi is real, however, it only affects ants. Known as the Cordyceps fungi it is found in tropical forests and attaches itself onto the insect from spores.
The spores make their way into the ants body and slowly begin to control it’s movements while devouring it from the inside out. Experts say that humans are immune from this terrifying ordeal as our body temperature is too high for fungi to grow.
However, there has been an example of a fungus outbreak changing the way normal everyday people behave. The most famous example is the suspected ergot poisoning in a small village in southern France.
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During the summer of 1951 hundreds of residents in Pont Saint-Esprit became violently ill. What was thought to be a bout of food poisoning worsened when the residents started experiencing some wild hallucinations that lead to them acting out in extreme ways.
In that one strange and violent summer, 25 people died and incidents occurred like a little girl screaming as she was 'chased by man-eating tigers', a woman sobbing over her children which were 'turned into sausages', a husband and wife chasing each other with knives, a young boy who tried to strangle his mother and much more.
Doctors in the village had to place patients in local barns as the hospitals became overfilled. Albert Hubbard who was the mayor of the village at that time told the press: "I have seen healthy men and women suddenly become terrorised, ripping their bedsheets, hiding themselves beneath their blankets to escape hallucinations,”
The outbreak is thought to have been caused by ergot poisoning which was common back in the middle ages and used to be associated with witchcraft. Known as ergotism, it occurs when a person eats a food that has been contaminated with a fungus called claviceps purpurea.
The fungus is common in rye but can also be found it other grains and grass. People who fall victim to ergotism can suffer from gangrene, muscle spasms, hallucinations, severe diarrhoea, and other symptoms.
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