It\u2019s a compelling story, but it has a hard time horrifying me because it is so fake. This is the consequence of a) the film being engineered to horrify and b) my knowledge of basic mycology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off, Cordyceps<\/em> is no threat. This might make some of those reading stay up at night, but Cordyceps<\/em> species are found over much of the Earth, including, yes, much of North America. Odds are it is where you live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, despite mammals living in close proximity to Cordyceps<\/em> for literally millions of years, no fungus in this genus has crossed over into infecting mammals. It just hasn\u2019t happened. And this includes periods when the climate was much warmer than today (so there goes the movie\u2019s premise that climate change could push Cordyceps<\/em> to cross not just a species barrier, but a class<\/em> barrier). Trust me, it\u2019s not happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But set that aside for a moment and suppose it would? Then what? It would probably be barely capable of infecting a human. It would cause a minor, localized infection, something like a case of athlete\u2019s foot or jock itch, which the patient would eventually fight off and recover from. It would fail to complete its life cycle and fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But again, suppose it would, then what? The infected would go insane and then die. After they were dead, the fungus would sprout from their bodies and fruit. End of life cycle. No decades-long zombie stage, sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And by \u201cinsane\u201d above, I just mean randomly berserk and increasingly deranged. Remember, it took eons for Cordyceps<\/em> to evolve to instill in an insect a very rudimentary desire to climb into a bush and bite a leaf vein. It would take eons more just to properly instill in a mammal the desire to do climb high up in its last hours of life. Forget about the complex desire to pursue prey that happens in The Last of Us<\/em>. Just not happening. And don\u2019t get me started on how preposterous the whole hive mind thing in the infected is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the long-term infected are just so unrealistic. Cordyceps<\/em> is an ascomycete fungus, yet the infected sprout characteristic basidiomycete fruiting bodies.* That\u2019s a difference at the division<\/em> level of biology \u2014 a step above the class level! And to put the icing on the cake, they are a mix of fungal fruiting bodies from many different genera of basidiomycetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * In fairness, I will note that Cordyceps<\/em> fruiting bodies do appear growing out of the skin of some relatively recently-infected individuals. But that doesn\u2019t diminish the nonsensical premise of all the other unrelated ones erupting later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s like some Hollywood type with little or no knowledge of mycology was tasked with making people look like ghoulishly infected corpses full of fungus. Because, no doubt, one was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a compelling story, but it has a hard time horrifying me because it is so fake. This is the consequence of a) the film being engineered to horrify and b) my knowledge of basic mycology. First off, Cordyceps is no threat. This might make some of those reading stay up at night, but Cordyceps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5904,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901\/revisions\/5904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}