Can the fungus in the HBO series The Last of Us turn humans into zombies one day? Here's what biologists say
CBC
The fungal pathogen that wipes out much of humanity in HBO's latest series The Last of Us is real, but can the cordyceps fungus actually turn humans into zombies one day?
"It's highly unlikely because these are organisms that have become really well adapted to infecting ants," Rebecca Shapiro, assistant professor at University of Guelph's department of molecular and cellular biology, told Craig Norris, host of CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition.
In the television series, the fungus infects the brain of humans and turns them into zombies. In real life, it can only infect ants and other insects in this manner.
Shapiro believes the series does a good job of realistically depicting the fungus and how it behaves, but it would actually take millions of years for it to find a way to adapt to humans and infect them the way it does in The Last of Us.
Humans are too warm and too complex for this particular fungus to jump to infect humans, she said.
There are, however, many fungi that do infect humans, though they cause rarely fatal conditions such as yeast infections and athlete's foot, James Scott, professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, told CBC's Metro Morning.
Fungi can also easily infect people who are immunocompromised or have underlying disease, like what happened in India in 2021 when more than 4,000 COVID-19 patients died from mucormycosis fungus infections.
"There's this increasing population of people who are living with vulnerabilities and underlying diseases or who are immunocompromised, and as that percentage of the population increases, we have more people who are susceptible to fungal disease," Shapiro said.
In Ontario, Scott said, there are two main types of fungi to be concerned about. One is called blastomyces, which can cause lung infection and often shows up as a skin lesion that can be fatal.
Scott said it's a common fungi on the north shores of Lake Superior and east side of Georgian Bay. In 2021, the fungus infected more than a dozen people in a small First Nations community in northern Ontario and killed two people.
The other one found in Ontario, Histoplasma capsulatum, is associated with the accumulation of bird and bat droppings.
"As the populations of those other animals are impacted by these kinds of diseases, it stands to have negative consequences for us. So not a direct threat to our lives as yet, but still a major concern in the big picture," Scott said.
With climate change on people's minds, Shapiro said there is reason to suspect rising global temperatures can cause new fungal pathogens to emerge in our environment.
Fungi are found in the soil and trees, and are well adapted to environmental temperatures, she explained.
