'It's Real': Nightmare Fungus From 'Last Of Us' Is Out There, Showrunner Says

The long-awaited premiere of “The Final Of Us” on HBO Max was so widespread it reportedly prompted the streaming community’s servers to crash.

When viewers lastly did get to see the debut of the online game adaptation, many couldn’t assist however surprise if the parasitic fungus that takes over people and transforms them into mutant zombie-like creatures has any foundation in actuality.

The alarming reply?

“It’s actual,” showrunner Craig Mazin advised The Hollywood Reporter. “There are some exceptional documentaries that you may watch which might be fairly terrifying.”

He’s referring to footage displaying how the Cordyceps fungus can primarily take over bugs similar to ants.

A 2019 report in Nationwide Geographic particulars how the fungus “infects a foraging ant via spores that connect and penetrate the exoskeleton and slowly takes over its habits.”

It provides:

“Because the an infection advances, the enthralled ant is compelled to go away its nest for a extra humid microclimate that’s favorable to the fungus’s development. The ant is compelled to descend to a vantage level about 10 inches off the bottom, sink its jaws right into a leaf vein on the north aspect of a plant, and look forward to dying.”

However don’t head out to your survival bunker but.

“From a purely scientific standpoint, would they do precisely to us what they do to ants? I don’t assume so,” Mazin advised THR. “I doubt it.”

Within the present, local weather change causes the fungus to mutate to contaminate people. In actuality, the Washington Submit factors out that people will not be solely already uncovered to many variations of the fungus, however that some folks actively search it out.

In reality, it’s present in well being dietary supplements.

“The fungus seems to carry some advantages for people,” the newspaper stated, including that the Memorial Sloan Kettering web site lists “improved power and stamina, higher kidney operate and immune system boosts” as potential advantages... however cautions that readers converse to a physician earlier than making an attempt it.