Cordyceps militaris emerging from infected tree, Photo Credit: Carl Leikhram
In the HBO hit series, The Last of Us, a global pandemic fueled by a mutated Cordyceps fungus turns people into zombies – a scenario seemingly realistic to anyone who watched nature documentaries under quarantine.
Cordyceps parasitization in cicada nymphs, Photo Credit: Dorothy Smullen.
While Cordyceps is a real fungus that affects insects, famously seen parasitizing ants in BBC’s Planet Earth hijacking their brains before exploding out of their heads, the risk of a fungal-driven apocalypse is pure fiction, according to James White, a plant pathology professor at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Science, who notes that fungi, unlike viruses, have limited ability to spread between humans. However, cordyceps still pose real threats to humans and the risks increase with climate change.
“A zombie apocalypse is really a reach,” said Dr. White, who directs the Rutgers Mycological Herbarium, which contains more than 40,000 fungal collections. “But there are nerve toxins that can affect people. Microbial fungal toxins grow in our foods. Some are pretty powerful.”
The scenario would look like this: A famine, a serious drought, or some other natural disaster more likely to occur as the climate warms, renders food scarce. The economy falters and people start saving food that isn’t normally eaten and resort to eating old, stored rice and other kinds of food prone to contamination. They are poisoned, not zombified. And it’s happened before in history.
“It’s feasible that we can have a toxic situation when you consider the way we produce a lot of our foods. They’re factory-produced and extracted from plants,” said Dr. White. “The contaminants in those could certainly affect human development and it’s not a far reach that fungi could potentially impact human behavior through toxins.”
“This is an ergot fungus filled with alkaloids, filled with chemicals like LSD that was modified with organic chemistry,” said Dr. White. “So you can imagine that people have consumed grains, ergot fungus, and got poisoned by ergot alkaloids that affect their bodies in a big way. Causes involuntary convulsions in some forms.”
Dr. White urges action to mitigate climate change and its consequences, as well as preserving government agencies that ensure safe food production, like the FDA.
Cordyceps capitatia growing in field, Photo Credit: Nina Burghardt
“The coolest stuff”
Dr. White encourages anyone interested in helping advance this knowledge to study at the Department of Plant Biology.
“I love studying fungi and plants and how these microbes work inside plants. It’s just the coolest stuff,” said Dr. White. “You get to be close to nature and go outside and hunt them, and learn their names, learn what they do. You can be locked in a classroom doing calculus all day or you can come in the woods with us. Study mushrooms and commune with nature.”
For those whose studies may be inspired by fictionalized science, the second season of The Last of Us premieres this month on Max.
