Just as the series “The Last of Us” uses the real-life Cordyceps fungus to tell the story of a post-apocalyptic world, the way the infection is spread by the tainted flour also has real substance.
In the series, based on the video game of the same name, modern civilization is destroyed by a parasitic fungus that in 2003 mutates to adapt to the heat and infects the world’s largest flour factory in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Cordyceps infects people’s brains and controls their movements, turning them into a kind of zombie that spreads the infection through tentacles in their mouths, bites, or even kisses like the one Tess receives.
But although in real life the Cordyceps fungus does not affect humans, the apocalyptic event of eating contaminated bread has historical foundations, since something very similar to what we saw in “The Last of Us” happened in France in 1951.
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‘The Last of Us’: the chilling real-life case of people infected by tainted bread
As French food historian Steven L. Kaplan reports in his 2008 book “Le Pain Maudit” (“Cursed Bread”), in the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit, France, there was a mysterious bread poisoning.
It all happened on August 16, 1951, when the inhabitants of the small town suddenly suffered terrifying hallucinations in which they were consumed by fire, giant plants or hideous beasts.
A man tried to drown because his stomach was eaten by snakes, a 60-year-old woman was thrown against a wall and broke three ribs, and one subject even saw his heart escape from his body.
A girl imagined she was attacked by tigers, a 22-year-old tried to drown her mother, and a man jumped from his second-floor window thinking it was a plane, breaking both his legs in the fall.
In an August 2010 BBC interview, 87-year-old Leon Armunier, who was the town’s postmaster in 1951, shared what his experience of hallucinations and nausea was like.
Leon and many of the villagers had to be taken to Avignon hospital in straitjackets. Leon says that even in the hospital he shared a room with three other teenagers who were chained to their beds.
For what they were going through there was no cure, no cure, and so far there is only one plausible explanation: the bread baked between August 15 and 16 was contaminated with erysipelas, a poisonous fungus found in rye.
Local baker Roch Briand was responsible for using the contaminated flour that ultimately left more than 300 people affected, 46 confined to nursing homes and hospitals, and 7 to 10 dead.
As the summer of 1951 was very wet, the ergot fungus sprouted in all the fields of the country and the infected grains ended up in Briand’s bakery.
Although to this day there are several theories about what happened, scientific and historical research shows that everything was caused by the contaminated bread.
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Source: univision
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
