Could the next public health crisis be caused by a fungus? The threat of such an emergency is posed at the outset of the hit TV series, The Last Of Us, which begins in the 1960s with a bleak speech by an epidemiologist on the danger of fungi. "If the world were to get slightly warmer, then there is reason to evolve," warns a prescient John Hannah, referencing their potential to infect and overpower a person's mind. "Candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus: any one of them could be capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control of not millions of us, but billions." The show takes this idea and runs with it, jumping forward 40 years to when a mass cordyceps outbreak leads to a devastating pandemic which transforms people into blood-thirsty abominations. An extreme outcome with plenty of artistic licence taken - but is it entirely without scientific basis? Image: A mass cordyceps outbreak transforms...
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