Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s The Last of Us, “When You’re Lost in the Darkness.” Set in 2023, HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us takes place 20 years after a fungal pandemic has destroyed modern civilization: what the video game calls the Cordyceps brain infection. Inspired by real-life science, the show’s Cordyceps fungus threat is explained in a prologue set against the backdrop of a talk show in 1968. 35 years later, in September 2003, the CBI outbreak causes the spread of the zombie-like “Infected”: Cordyceps fungus-infected humans who mutate into different strains and stages of Infected, including “Runners,” “Stalkers,” “Clickers,” “Shamblers,” and “Bloaters.” In 1968, epidemiologists Dr. Schoenheiss (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Dr. Neuman (John Hannah) weigh the potential of a viral pandemic. Schoenheiss is concerned an airborne virus could spread across the globe in a matter of weeks, and “the whole world becomes sick all at once.” Neuman counters, “Mankind has been at war with the virus from the start. Sometimes, millions of people die, as in an actual war. But in the end, we always win.”
