The year 2013, and the release of a warm expected zombie-apocalypse video game is on the horizon.
The game, called The end of usThe players are invited to see what is such an imaginary scenario: a world breaks a pandemic where a pathogen kills millions of people.
Unlike many fictions of Apocalypse, the pathogen responsible is not a bacteria or a virus, but a fungus called cordyceps that imposes people and abuses their brain.
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The writers in Game Studio Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California, inspired by real fungi – especially Ophiocordyceps unilateralisknown as zombie-ant fungus. The fungus infected insects and releases the chemicals of the margin of animals to change their behavior. The release of the game was first, the poor dog transferred to scientists, including behavioral behavior David Hughes, which was a media specialist and science of fungal and pandemic inspiring the story. Hughes, which is at Pennsylvania State University at the University Park, since the transfer of study of climate change and food security.
The end of us Spawned a game consecutive by 2020 and a critical identified television show, the second period in which it ended in 25 May in HBO.
Hughes asked Nature About her game consultancy experience and why the covid-19 changes our appetite to zombies.
What are you involved in the game?
I asked the unconscious dog studios and some more people known in this space, including psychologists, to discuss if we could have a global pandemic. Of course, during the intervening, we know that the answer is yes.
They ask us to go around Europe and do a series of lessons to prevent criticism and giving support to a kind of infections made by new parasites that cause disease. I have a good fortune to go to studios and see the art involved, and meet the team and the voice artists in the video game.
What are you doing with the science of the game?
I really admire what the players have taken in this and began to understand things like fungi and slime debts, and seek to think about the ways in which these organisms make their business. They really take it to themselves and attach the elements of the game.
I think they either mail-order molds in slime order so they can only leave it in a petri dish and check it out. And you see that all over the game. And now in TV program, in intros, these slime balls have. The writers are Geeky, and understanding fungi is not complicated, so they ran with it.
The end of us Set up in a whole world apocalyptic in which millions of people are infected with a fungus that takes their brain.
Are you playing in games?
I tried and failed me never! I’m just a common hopeless scientist.
Was the idea of a cordyceps in the gutter?
Unrealistic that fungi can impose people when they come from animals. It is unreasonable to think that they can cause changes to people’s behavior. The writers get freedoms. They have different stages about how infection changes in hours. That’s all albatons, of course.
Looked at the second TV performance period, it’s interesting that they have this communication characteristic of spores or fungal hyphae. That’s interesting because we know fungi connected as many kilometers – for example, mycorrhizal fungi, under the root system of trees, do that effectively.
Do you impress science on TV show?
I have always found the wrong question, because I don’t think the job of entertainment industry is stimulating scientists. Scientists are very problematic with individuals. It’s called Carl Sagan effect. The most popular in science, your science is not very good. This is an Inverse relationship. I think it’s just not important. The science belongs to society, and people need to tell stories about it. And, you know, snooty scientists say, ‘Oh, you don’t get it right,’ – like, who, who cares?
What do you react when the Covid-19 pandemic took place?
I told you! on The end of us lectureI’m talking about the same thing. I say, the problem is not if we have a zombie-ant fungiting of people. It doesn’t happen. The problem is when 5% lost our population, and the global economy has fired, we saw.
Do you think Covid-19 pandemic changes our appetite to zombie-apocalypse media?
Very interesting. You build a game about a dystopian in the future based on a pandemic, do you live in a pandemic, and then what is the game related to or in the movie? I think our appetite in fear of pandemics went down because we all have PTSD. Or, we don’t have PTSD and realizes that some of us ignore other people.
So interesting to see Lore History Zombie. Back to the 1950s and 60s, it was all about nuclear weapons, because we all were afraid of it. And then it moved to the diseases, because we had a populate society. Then we were a pandemic, and we shrugged and continued. So the interesting thing is, The end of us Beautiful, but it’s not what it was.
This interview is edited for height and explanation.
This article has been copied with permission and first published On May 23, 2025.
