Man shows how to grow 'zombie' Cordyceps fungus at home, accused of 'trying to start The Last of Us'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A man "is all set to unleash" the fungus similar to that depicted in the post-apocalyptic drama 'The Last of Us'. The wildly popular HBO Max series revolves around a group of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a fungus that turns people into zombie-like creatures. In the series, the Cordyceps fungus invades people's bodies and brains, transforming them into flesh-eating creatures.
A TikTok user left some people ocncerned after he published a video showing how to cultivate the said fungus at home. Some people claimed he was "trying to start The Last of Us." Mushroom culture company Spore n' Sprout showed how to cultivate Cordyceps at home.
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@sporensprout The Easiest Way to Grow Cordyceps Militaris Fungi: Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice. This method is great because the normal procedure would be to cook and sterilize rice to grow Cordyceps, but by using ready rice you can skip all of the prep work. By using a filter patch bag as a humidity chamber, everything is enclosed and conveniently suitable for growing Cordyceps. Final dry weight was 8 grams per rice bag! (45 days growth). It is best to use liquid culture from a reliable source because Cordyceps militaris is susceptible to senescence and the cultures viability degrades from over expansion, old age, and high temperatures. Single spore isolation techniques must be carried out to breed fresh strains of Cordyceps militaris periodically to ensure genetic stability. Cordyceps militaris liquid culture available at sporensprout.com #foryou #fyp #mushrooms #cordyceps #fungi #growyourown #medicine #rice #lastofus #zombie #howto #spores #mycelium #fypシ #thelastofus ♬ original sound - Spore n' Sprout
On the website, the expert offers the cordyceps serum in vials that customers can buy for under $13 for each syringe. In the video, he says, "I'm going to show you the easiest way to grow cordyceps militaris with Uncle Ben's rice."
The expert taps injection site and injects 10ml of the fungal culture into a bag of rice before massaging the bag, stating that the fungus was allowed to grow between 60-65 degress for two weeks. In addition to wanting to get people "growing [their] own gourmet mushrooms," Spore n' Sprout stated that they intended to "share the understanding of mushrooms and its potential," per the Daily Star.
Cordyceps cannot grow on humans
At 45 to 50 days, the cordyceps reaches "full maturity," the expert said. Although these particular fungi cannot grow on humans because of their high body temperatures, research showed that 1.7 million people die each year from fungal infections globally. The growth of fungi infections was a "hidden crisis," according to a study published in The Journal for Unicellular Biology and Human Disease in 2020.
Outbreak unlikely
Although the series is pure fiction, a pandemic brought about by fungi may be cataclysmic. Dr Andrej Spec, a Washington University School of Medicine professor, reportedly said, "The idea of having a catastrophic fungal outbreak is relatively unlikely, but would be significantly more scary than Covid because Covid spreads through a relatively small space, whereas spores can travel miles."