Many successful horror or science fiction franchises share a common element: the scary, terrorizing thing could, possibly, happen in real life. If it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility, it’s just not that scary. (That’s why I find serial killer stories far scarier than anything supernatural.) 

When The Last of Us video game and then TV show became popular, it touched off rounds of internet searches and inquiries to mycologists. Could mushroom-like growths take over human brains and turn people into crazed cannibals? Sort of, but not really. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, or zombie-ant fungus as it is known, only infects insects—for now. Climate change, as the experts in our cover story suggest, may slowly change the temperature at which some fungal organisms can survive, making humans and other species susceptible to them. 

But The Last of Us revolves around another common horror trope: in a post-apocalypse world, other humans often turn out to be a greater threat than the Big Bad Terrifying Thing. Our instinctual greed, tendency toward self-protection over common good, and thirst for power can turn deadly faster than any fungal spore can evolve. Indeed “the last of us” likely does not refer to the handful of humans who survive after a science experiment goes awry but to the simple pathogens who will surely outlive us once our human nature does us all in. 

It’s a dark prospect, but one that might be easier to solve than antifungal-resistant endemic parasites. Be kind. Share your food. Don’t try to impose your worldview on everyone else. Problem solved.   

—Kris Cambra, Editor 

P.S. We won’t be publishing a Winter issue of Medicine@Brown in print, but you can visit our redesigned website for new stories. We plan to go back to three issues per year in 2027.