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Cordyceps Can’t Get You
The zombie fungus only rules ants. The real fungal risks are quieter.
The show opens on a 1960s talk show. A calm scientist explains that a fungus can’t survive inside us because we run too hot. Then he adds the part that ruins your evening: warm the planet a little, and a fungus might learn to live at our temperature.
Cut to a few decades later, and the world is overrun by people with mushrooms sprouting out of their faces. When The Last of Us aired, a lot of us typed “last of us real fungus” into a search bar before the credits finished rolling. I did too.
So I went looking. I read the ant studies, the fungal biology, the CDC pages and the World Health Organization’s list of the fungi it worries about most. Here’s the short version: the zombie part is fiction, the science in that opening scene is half right, and the fungal risk you’re most likely to meet this year is sitting in a wet basement after a storm.
Let’s take them one at a time.
What is the Last of Us real fungus?
The real thing is called Ophiocordyceps, and it’s a parasite of insects. The most famous species, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, goes after carpenter ants in forests around the world.
