Maybe the fungus mostly infected fresh produce and only people with healthy diets got sick and became zombies on Day 1
-
-
Which means Trump himself probably survived, but not for very long
1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes -
Lol I'm actually headcanoning this now We get almost no clues about why Joel and Sarah were among the uninfected but they're apparently having money problems and Joel is working a lot of long hours so neither of them is getting many home cooked meals
3 replies 1 retweet 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @SaoirseMclean
Unbeknownst to everyone in setting forever, Sarah had discovered the actual cure Hardcore drugs
1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes -
Replying to @BootlegGirl @SaoirseMclean
It would be funny if the Cordyceps spores are inactivated by cooking so the culprit is eating raw produce like salad and fresh fruit It fits the profile of a lot of foodborne illness (but not ergotism, which this is most directly based on)
1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @SaoirseMclean
I mean there's no reason why it would have developed a way to avoid cooking if it jumped from ants Like, cordyceps of the "zombie" variety is actually super complex and has evolved all these back and forth mechanisms with different ant species But no ants cook, so...
1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes -
Replying to @BootlegGirl @SaoirseMclean
The complex life cycle where it actually grows long term in plants before jumping to a different phase in humans (a reference to the life cycle of the Plasmodium parasite in mosquitoes that gives you malaria or the Toxoplasma parasite) is already a huge stretch
1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes -
Like that kind of thing takes a long time to evolve, it can't just suddenly fuck with humans in this new and complicated way if it had no humans in its original environment
2 replies 1 retweet 3 likes -
But you know whatever I do still think the parallel to ergotism is intentional and highly evocative, since it was a big enough deal in medieval society to be this whole cultural thing ("St. Anthony's fire", "the dancing sickness")
2 replies 1 retweet 2 likes -
But that's not actually a whole disease life cycle, it's just the unfortunate effect of a fungus whose waste products happened to be acid so eating it was like dropping acid (literally -- LSD is synthesized from ergotamine)
1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes
Fun fact, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals started as a much more erudite script and included Prof. Higgins saying the "musical zombie virus" had hit Earth before and was the real explanation for St. Anthony's Fire But they cut that out because it was too nerdy to be worth it
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.