Ok so The Last Of Us centres around a deadly infection caused by funghi known as
the Cordyseps. These real world parasites can be found in nature and what's most terrifying
about the Last Of Us is that there is basis in science for something like this to happen.
Episode 1 of the HBO show opens with a scientist theorising the
rise of them all the way back in the 60s and like he says, there's no cure.
But where did the infection originate from and how did it spread so quickly?
Well throughout this video we're gonna be breaking down everything we know about how
it began and the theories about how it spread so quickly. If you enjoy the video then please
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With that out the way, thanks for clicking this, now let's get into The Last Of Us.
Now when looking at where it all started I think that the first place to go to is
the game. The playstation classic doesn't give us too much of a backstory on where
it originated from but there are teases found in documents. When looking through
newspapers we come across the Texas Herald which reported on the infection.
On September 26th it reported that admittance at hospitals was up 300% due to the infection.
The FDA also released a statement about contaminated crops and that
massive recalls were expected. This of couse didn't happen but
the statement did give us a clue about what was happening. It said:
So there are clues that it's coming from countries with a
hotter climate. This was teased at in the initial science report at the start
and 2003 is listed as being one of the hottest years on record.
Now though it's not in South America, we do hear a report in episode 1 that there
is something strange going on in Jakarta. This indonesian city is located in Asia
and they might have changed this from South America for us to explore it in
a later episode. During filming of the show people from Jakarta posted that things were
being filmed in the city so we could possibly see this coming down the line at some point.
Indonesia actually houses the largest bread and flour and factory in the world so this
could be the reason that the country was chosen to be the place it was housed.
Anyway I think the show will likely follow the same route and there were several clues
in the episode that this was attached to food products with flour in them.
Firstly we saw Mrs Addler on her drive being fed
it and she later on became one of the main infected peopple that Sarah encountered.
Joel also said:
I'm on atkins.
This is a diet that's low carb and because of this he'd be avoiding foods like bread and so on.
Now this date was also his birthday but the
pair never had a birthday cake which would also contain the ingrediants.
Tommy was gutted that they weren't having pancakes
that morning and they had bacon and eggs instead of things like cereal.
Now another big clue came when Sarah went to Mrs Addlers.
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She was baking cookies which would include the ingredient but because
they were Raisen sarah didn't end up eating them.
This might not be the case but the episode constantly kept hammering home the idea that
they were avoiding food all the time and those that ended up infected ended up eating it.
Food being contaminated with cordyseps could explain how the virus managed to
spread so quickly, especially if it was located in foods that people regularly ate.
Flour is in a lot of products and if it got into
this then it could easily spread across the planet.
The game details that once the outbreak had happen that 60%
of humanity had either become infected or died out within a couple of months.
The cordyseps can also of course be passed on through bites and in
the game we have the spores as well. This would massively push
it across the planet and mean that the infection could spread really quickly.
Now as for the real life inspiration,
there's actually a similar case that happened in during the 50s.
In Pont Saint Espirt a mass poisoning happened in which more than 250 people were involved.
This was a food borne illness that saw bread being infected by Ergot. This is
a fungus that grows on rye and it spread onto the bread and thus into the food.
At a bakery in the fungus contaminated the food and this was then ate by the civilians
in the village. It brought on illness and in some cases insanity. It took months for
it all to build up and there were bakers who suspected that something was off in the flour.
They named it cursed bread and those that ate it had fits of vommitting and diaherrea.
More than 50 people were interned at an asylum and the way that the infected go
crazy in The Last Of Us could be inspired by this.
Now there weren't any people going around biting
others to spread it but there were some strange occurences.
A man hallucinated that he was an aeroplane and he jumped from his
second story window which killed him. As the scientist mentions in
episode 1 LSD is created using Fungus so it's easy to see how this happened.
In addition to this an 11 year old boy attempted to strangle his own mother
and he lashed out in a violent rage brought on by the parasite.
Later doctors named this the Nuit D'apocalypse which translates to apocalyptic night.
It's so chilling hearing stories like this and you can see how real
life ocurences like this could end up inspiring what we see in the game.
The main thing with the cordyseps is that they attach to your brain
and the parasite begins to override your motor functions and desires. This is why
we see people twitching and lashing out at others. The person is still in there which
is why the infected can often be found crying but they don't have control over
their desires anymore and will attack all those that they see who aren't infected.
Now in the case of the Ergot posioning the grains we inspected by the governments
control board. They enforced rules in which it was difficult to purchase
products containing flour and the people were very much put on Wartime shortages.
The factory was charged with involuntary manslaughter with an employee being arressted.
It was found in an inquiry that the flour mill in the area had been cutting corners. Bloody
always happens that. They'd been mixing rye in with the flour in order to be able to cut
the amount of flour they were using. They'd also been using the left over piles that tend
to be on the ground and beside the machines after going through the process. Sometimes
these sat for weeks and they were prone to get infected with mites and ergot.
Just all unsanitary conditions that led to this becoming a much bigger problem.
People were charged for it and all in all it became a pretty big story in the area.
If it's all connected to food sources I can definitely see this being something
that is linked in and it is possible this ties in with how the food was spread.
Dunno if you've seen Garth Marenghi before but
I'll play the clip in a bit that I think basically sums up episode 1.
There's an episode where the water gets infected with something that turns peoples into apes
and they have a bit where some characters hilariously avoid drinking it by pure luck.
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Just soemthing I thought of when going back and watching episode 1 and seeing people be like,
I'll not have the cookies mate I'm not having them if they've got raisins in.
Hopefully they can get a shot which will help them cure themselves.
Not that kind of shot mate dear me.
Anyway that's the video and I hope you learned something. I think the
show will probably adapt this into it as the food stuff is in the game and
they seem to be sticking pretty closely to the source material.
Let me know what you think below and if you have any other theories I'd love to hear them.
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With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video,
I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace