After playing The Last of Us (2013) and being stricken by a fungal infection recently, I visited a doctor who prescribed me with antibiotics, and it was not lost on me that my doctor was using a ‘modern’ development from fungi to battle other fungi invading my body.
I am not ‘clicking’ just yet, but it seems a fitting end for the very nature we try to tame to be the thing which eradicates us.
“First, all that taming and mastering [of nature] has made such a mess that it is unclear whether life on earth can continue. Second, interspecies entanglements that once seemed the stuff of fables are now materials for serious discussion among biologists and ecologists, who show how life requires the interplay of many kinds of beings.”
Lownhaupt Tsing, 2015
We are already aware of the ways in which fungi and plants often have symbiotic, mutually beneficial partnerships; mycorrhizal fungi, for example, will “greatly increase the absorptive area of a plant, acting as extensions to the root system” (RHS, 2024) when the presence of phosphorous, which is needed for plants to thrive, is scarce.
We are even aware that fungi such as the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (or the aptly nicknamed ‘zombie-ant fungus‘) exists, and the behaviour it displays is so very like a zombie contagion. It was as if the fungus was written for 1970’s Western science-fiction, as if life is mimicking art. This description from National Geographic is, of course, written for a public audience rather than a scientific paper so it may be hyperbolic, but it’s hard to ignore the parallels in the ways the fungus and zombie contagions act.
The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus has just one goal: self-propagation and dispersal…
…spores that attach and penetrate the exoskeleton and slowly takes over its behavior.
The ant is compelled to descend to a vantage point about 10 inches off the ground, sink its jaws into a leaf vein on the north side of a plant, and wait for death.
Meanwhile, the fungus feeds on its victim’s innards until it’s ready for the final stage. Several days after the ant has died, the fungus sends a fruiting body out through the base of the ant’s head, turning its shriveled corpse into a launchpad from which it can jettison its spores and infect new ants.
As in zombie lore, there’s an incubation period where infected ants appear perfectly normal and go about their business undetected by the rest of the colony.
National Geographic: How a parasitic fungus turns ants into ‘zombies’, 2019
This is the fungus inspired the premise of The Last of Us (2013); shortened in-game to Cordyceps, this fungus produces different types of fungal-zombie enemies that all mimic the actions of the real-life counterpart.
“Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is revealed to be the primary cause of the infected outbreak and subsequent collapse of human civilization. In the show, the fungus, having adapted to higher temperatures due to climate change, takes control of humans (as opposed to insects) as an alternative host…”
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis in fiction, Wiki
“The insect world I think very often inspires science-fiction writers and movie makers, and clearly in this case video-game producers.” says entomologist, Michael Wall of the San Diego Natural History Museum for WNYC, 2013. Nick Druckmann (creative director of The Last of Us) made a conscious choice to take inspiration from the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, and so perhaps we can infer that he was aware of what he was implying when mentioning that climate change was the reason for the fungus adapting to withstand human body temperatures.
Griffin (2012) explains how “the zombie [functions] as a mutable, polyvalent metaphor for many of society’s troubled times”. Zombies mirror our most present fears, so of course it is fitting that in light of the effects of climate change on our planet the game be developed with the self-awareness in mind to make this new kind of ‘eco-zombie’ capable of erasing us and creating a new ecological status quo. With the ‘eco-zombie’ we can develop past the idea that zombies represent ‘displaced people’ (Stratton, 2020) as they did in their resurgence in the early 2000’s and look beyond this into a new type of fear – the fear of the earth itself reclaiming us, using its arsenal of quickly mutating fungi to infiltrate our minds and make us part of their masses.
It’s a clear move forward from the “Patient Zero” blood-to-blood contagions (an allegory for AIDS/HIV), experimentation gone wrong (immunisation fears) and even a step forward from airborne viral contagions (SARS-COV-2). A decade on from the original game, the HBO television series finds its way onto our screens, still retaining its relevance, perhaps in part to the ever-present threat of fungal contagions even as late as 2022. We feel amongst ourselves a sense of distrust and anger towards the ways in which we, as the dominant species, have destroyed the planet and the fear of our comeuppance would be, terrifyingly, justified.
But why are fungi so fearsome? Perhaps it is because they defy definition, they do not behave how we expect them to behave and they defy taxonomies of classification. They merge the characteristics of animal and plant, and it is in this fusion we already encounter the monstrous, even before it fuses with human flesh.
“On the simplest physical level, this often entails the construction of creatures that transgress categorical distinctions, such as inside-outside, living-dead, insect-human and flesh-machine…
A fusion figure is a composite that unites attributes held to be categorically distinct and/or at odds in the cultural scheme of things…
Carroll, Noel: Fantastic Biologies and the Structures of Horrific Imagery, for The Monster Theory Reader, 2020
As I alluded to earlier, we are attempting to harness mycellium to solve problems caused by capitalism, such as plastic waste disposal, cancer treatment and immuno-suppressing drugs. We simultaneously use their ability to adapt quickly while not fully understanding what that implies. At the same time, we know very little about how they function and the unexpected ways they might mutate.
“Despite the growing concern, fungal infections receive very little attention and resources, leading to a paucity of quality data on fungal disease distribution and anti-fungal resistance patterns,” the WHO warned in its first-ever global effort to rank fungal pathogens by threat level, a call-to-action released in October 2022.” Consequently, it is impossible to estimate their exact burden.“
Farah, 2023 for Salon.com
It’s a thing of anxious nightmares as well as Sci-Fi horror, and as fear of climate change continues to be of primary concern, I wonder how much further the ecological reclaiming of the land within the zombie sub-genre will continue to flourish. Perhaps instead we will be seeing tiny, toupee-sporting, orange zombies plaguing us from now on… Or a subterranean mycelial network of fur-lined tendrils all controlled by a central, bright orange, bulbous sporophore.
Turns out, no, I didn’t.
References/Further Reading
RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) – Mycorrhizal fungi. [online]
Lu, J. (2019). How a parasitic fungus turns ants into ‘zombies’. [online] National Geographic.
Wikipedia. (2020). Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. [online]
Farah, T. (2023). ‘The Last of Us’ is an almost-perfect metaphor for climate change, but it gets one thing wrong. [online] Salon.
WHO fungal priority pathogens list to guide research, development and public health action. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. Available Online.
Henkel, D. and Wijdicks, E.F.M. (2022). Cinema’s Terrifying Realities: Pandemics, Zombification, and SARS-COV-2. Clinical Medicine & Research, [online] 20(3), pp.121–124. doi:https://doi.org/10.3121/cmr.2022.1742.
Weinstock, J.A. (2020). The Monster Theory Reader. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press.
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