I want weird Annihilation noises on my desk by Monday morning

Quick bites from episode one of "The Last of Us."

Has anyone gotten Paul Stamets to talk about that dead body yet?

CW for gnarly corpse, though honestly, it’s so abstract at this point that it’s barely recognizable. You can click the button if you want to see puppies instead.

You think it’s a Banksy? (Screencap via HBO)

As scary as the idea of a cordyceps pandemic is, even from my very limited mycological knowledge bank, I can tell you that it probably wouldn’t happen exactly like The Last of Us depicts. Mainly, that corpse up there looks like an amalgamation of a few different fungi like a slime mold and some other kinds of mushrooms,¹ not just the cordyceps type (which looks a bit like a cattail.)

Cordyceps is a whole genus of fungi, but the show doesn’t specify which one is causing problems, and this was one of the less nasty images I could find. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

So it looks like it’d take at least a few kinds of fungi to make the giant evolutionary leap into humans,² instead of just one, to produce that exact cadaver. Hope that helps you sleep a little better!

That said, it’d be great to get an actual mycologist, preferably one of the weirder ones, on the phone to actually verify any of that because I know next to nothing.³ I know Vulture did an investigation about the plausibility of a cordyceps pandemic, but I haven’t seen anyone discuss this corpse specifically. Someone please run through every fungus adorning that thing, and I want cool facts about all of them too. Are any of them poisonous? Tasty? Life-changing-hallucination-inducing? (Did that person get to see any wild visions before they perished?) I have to know. It’s for my mental health.⁴

Unfortunately, I can’t do this myself because I’m in my death throes at my job right now. But it’s a free idea if anyone wants it!

It is absolutely imperative that The Last of Us includes the weird Annihilation noise

Did anyone else also get Annihilation vibes from that corpse?

CW for gnarly corpse again. There’s a kittens button below.

My kingdom for an unobstructed view of the whole thing. (Image via The Verge)

Great minds think alike, and these great minds understand that fungal body horror is neat. I agree!

It also reminded me of something sorely missing from The Last of Us—where are the weird noises to accompany the weird monsters? As far as I’m aware, The Last of Us’ sonic palette is a lot of 80’s and guitars, which is fine and all, but can we not spare one small riff? Not one little WAH wah WAH wah-ah?

And I don’t just want that soundbite for personal reasons—though I absolutely do. That soundbite comes from the track called “The Alien”; it sounds unknown, foreboding. But, as one of the composers told Slate, that sound was made with a synthesizer and some processing. If it’s something we can make and imagine, then how alien can it be? After all, in Annihilation, Natalie Portman is able to survive the climax of the movie by taking advantage of the alien antagonist’s instinct to self-destruct—something she recognizes in herself.

In The Last of Us, we understand that these horrors come from us too. The world got warmer because of us, and nature evolved and took advantage—or revenge. Cause and effect. And the resulting monsters used to be people. They’re not us, not anymore, but we recognize them all the same (you can hear Ellie asking if it’s harder to kill them because of this in the weeks ahead trailer).

Maybe, like there’s no sound we can create that will be truly alien, there is no such thing as horror beyond comprehension. Fear is a monster jumping out at you; horror is knowing that the monster was a person until it wasn’t, made so by forces completely outside of their control. It could happen to anyone, including you. Fear comes from the unknown, and horror comes from self-recognition.

Also, it’s just a damn good soundbite. And having said all that, I’m issuing an ultimatum: give me weird Annihilation noises next week, or I’m getting a massive mycology nerd to email you detailing every mycelial mistake you make for the rest of the show, my job be damned. If anything fungus-related is even a little unrealistic, I promise that you will be hearing from a Ph.D. with nothing better to do. Your move, HBO.

1. Some expert-level mycological analysis here, I know.

2. Parasitic cordyceps species prey on bugs, which is why finding pictures of it was a pretty unpleasant Google image search. I’m cool with fungus-wrought dead bodies, but I’m not a big fan of bugs. Cordyceps can have them.

3. Though, and I say this with the utmost admiration, I think you already have to be at least a little weird to go into mycology in the first place.

4. I will distract myself from apocalyptic anxiety by getting cool mushroom facts, thank you.