Is this our End: Can a fungal infection turn us all into zombies?

Let me tell you something very scary - there is a fungus that causes those affected to turn into zombies. It produces cells that enter the body. Then the fungus grows and begins to monopolize and capture the mind of the organism with the fungus (its host).

Parasitic fungi eat their victim from the inside, sucking up every last nutrient, as they prepare for their end. Then - in a scene more disturbing than the scariest movie - a death spiral occurs starting from the head.

This fungal body spreads the cells to everything around it - destroying others like zombies. It sounds like a myth. But the kingdom of fungi - unlike plants and animals - is unique.

The fungal parasitic species Cordyceps and Ophiocordyceps are real. There is the video game and the drama "The Last of Us" that show the power of zombies, But in the real world, could a Cordyceps epidemic - or caused by another fungus - occur?

"I think we ignore fungal infections as something dangerous for us," Dr Neil Stone, a senior fungal specialist at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, tells me.

"We've already done that for too long and we're not quite ready to deal with a fungal epidemic."

At the end of October last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) released its first list of fungi dangerous to life. There are border bug carriers, but you'll be relieved to know that Zombifying-Cordyceps aren't included. Why not?

Dr Charissa de Bekker, a biologist at Utrecht University, has studied how fungi make ants and says she doesn't think it could happen to people.

"Our body temperature is too high for many fungi to live well and grow. "Their consciousness system is simpler than ours, so it is easier to invade the insect's brain than ours, also their immune systems are very different from ours. ."

Many species of parasitic 'Cordyceps' fungi have evolved over millions of years, so specialization in infecting only one type of insect is questionable. Most do not jump from one insect to another.

"For this fungus to be able to fly from insects to us and cause infection is a very big step," says Dr. de Bekker.

The threats posed by fungi have long been dismissed. "People think of it as trivial, superficial or unimportant," says Dr. Stone. Only a few of the millions of fungal species cause disease, but some of them can have the worst effect of itching an infected foot or toenail. The fungus kills around 1.7 million people a year - that number is about three times that of malaria.

Should we take fungi more seriously?

Fungal infections are different from bacterial or viral infections. When fungi make us sick, they are almost always picked up from the environment rather than spread through coughs and sneezes.

We all suffer from occasional fungal problems, but they often need a weakened immune system to harm you. As medicine keeps us more alive - but there are some of us with weakened immune systems.

Dr Neil Stone from the (HSL) laboratory in London, Dr Stone says the fungal disease is infectiously different from Covid - in the way it spreads and the type of people it infects.

He thinks the threat is due to "the level of fungi in the environment... climate change, international travel, the increase in the number of patients and their profound neglect in terms of the treatment we have".

Fungus may not turn us all into zombies, but it can cause a lot more problems with Athlete's foot than we think.