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.
“It’s actual,” showrunner Craig Mazin advised The Hollywood Reporter. “There are some exceptional documentaries you can watch which might be fairly terrifying.”
He’s referring to footage displaying how the Cordyceps fungus can basically take over bugs similar to ants.
A 2019 report in Nationwide Geographic particulars how the fungus “infects a foraging ant by way of spores that connect and penetrate the exoskeleton and slowly takes over its conduct.”
“Because the an infection advances, the enthralled ant is compelled to depart 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 ahead to dying.”
However don’t head out to your survival bunker but.
“From a purely scientific viewpoint, would they do precisely to us what they do to ants? I don’t suppose 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 Put up factors out that people usually are not solely already uncovered to many variations of the fungus, however that some individuals actively search it out.
The truth is, it’s present in well being dietary supplements.
“The fungus seems to carry some advantages for people,” the newspaper mentioned, including that the Memorial Sloan Kettering web site lists “improved energy and stamina, higher kidney operate and immune system boosts” as potential advantages… however cautions that readers communicate to a health care provider earlier than attempting it.