THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
The Superdeep, Ophiocordyceps and the Zombie apocalypse
Recently, a movie came up on Shudder - an online movie streaming service which all horror-fans should definitely sign up to - which was brought to my attention via a friend. I watched it and, while the film itself is not an amazing piece of cinematic media, it does bring something very interesting to the fore; something that is firmly based in reality yet so alien, the average viewer could easily mistake it for pure sci-fi horror. I shall explain this facet of evil in all its grotesque repugnance while avoiding movie spoilers for those who would wish to watch and, of course, while there are no Zombies in this movie at all, I will be adding a Zombified twist to this article.
The plot of the movie
In 1984, Anna Fedorova, a Russian epidemiologist, was working on a vaccine for Russian forces in Africa after they discovered a previously unknown disease. In order to speed things up, all preliminary and animal testing was forfeit, fast-tracking directly to human trials. Anna's colleague Dr. Zotoff volunteered for the experimental vaccine to be tested on himself but the formula was off and Zotoff perished. Anna attempted to quit, unable to cope with the grief, but Colonel Morozov of Military Intelligence who was overseeing the project, would not have it, forcing Anna back to work until the vaccine was perfected.
Years later, Anna is contacted by Colonel Morozov informing her that she has been assigned on a mission to the superdeep Kola bore hole (known to the people as a drilling hole but actually a top-secret underground research laboratory). Strange sounds have been heard coming from the bottom of the pit and twenty lab workers have gone missing - Dr. Grigoriev, the man in charge of the lab, has also been found to have discovered an unknown disease down there, but has been keeping it to himself for whatever reason. Anna is told to go in, after being escorted by a team of USSR soldiers and the colonel himself, relieve Dr. Grigoriev of his command and retrieve samples of the disease for later study. If successful, she is promised to be promoted to the head of the Military Biological Defense Institute.
Cutting a long story short; the marines, Anna and the Colonel reach the facility, find Dr. Grigoriev - who later manages to escape -, access the lower levels and find, well... nothing at first glance - the place is nearly empty. It's not until they explore a bit more and descend a little deeper that they find the disease. It's a highly virulent mold which, once a person becomes infected - usually by inhaling spores -, it 'grows' on their body. Apparently the infected cannot feel the mold-growth, only that they are cold and feel 'not right', unable to deduce the source of the emotion. The mold forms structures, eventually sprouting small spherical pouch-like forms which fill and fill with millions of tiny spores capable of infecting other humans. Eventually the pouches swell so much, they burst, releasing clouds of toxic mold seeds into the air, spreading the dreaded infection with devasting efficiency. And the structures it creates out of people are phenomenally portrayed in the movie - all black, greasy tendrils and covered legions, often pulsating disgustingly. It actually 'glues' people to the walls or floors, commonly destroying body parts in the process. If your thinking this all sounds disturbingly familiar to a real-world fungal virus, you'd be right.
Ophiocordyceps
Ophiocordyceps (often known as Ant Cordyceps by those less intellectually inclined) is a particularly nasty species of fungi with a truly disturbing life-cycle. It's found in almost all jungles around the world, places that, more often than not, contain a very large number of ants of varying species, and being vegetation-heavy jungles, are almost always damp. Once an ant becomes infected by the microscopic, almost invisible, spores from the fungi, those spores attack the ant's brain, achieving a very primitive sort of mind-control, giving the ant one single command, 'climb'. The helpless ant, which likely has no idea it is infected, climbs as high as it can (or as high as the virus wants it to); up a blade of grass, plant stem or twig. It'll be somewhere close to the ant nest or somewhere other ants regularly visit - ants seldom travel anywhere alone. The ant is then forced to clamp its mandibles into whatever it climbed, locking it in place. It's at this point that the fungi inside it starts to grow. If the ant is lucky, it will die of starvation, escaping a more gruesome fate. Having grown to sufficient size, the cordyceps fungi bursts out of the ant's body, escaping from the eyes, mouth, any open hole... even exploding through the armoured shell. The fungoid structures that emerge, further 'glue' the ant into position, and spread, growing more and more, sometimes almost completely enveloping the host ant. Eventually, the fruiting bodies of the fungus pop, showering the jungle below with thousands of infectious spores, each a tiny, microscopic, death-package for an ant. The cycle begins again and continues forever, a mindless death march; infection, death, infection, death.
Now, there are tonnes of cordyceps variants, not just ones that effect ants - moths, crickets and so on all have their own deadly parasitic fungus disease. What I find so interesting about the ant one (other than the fact that it is basically just a super-early form of the Zombie virus that only affects ants) is that ants are a social species, just like humans. It does not take a genius to work out that this makes ant cordyceps all the more aggressive but also has a surprising further link to The Superdeep movie. While the infected ants themselves so no signs of knowing they are under the iron-grip of a fungal-mold virus, other nearby ants can detect the hostile spores within their bodies and can carry them far away from the nest, where they are unlikely to be a problem. This, of course, seems quite cruel - 'there's no way to save you so I'll force you away' - but it just mirrors they kind of hostile medicine that humans would need to enact to counter a Zombie outbreak - 'there is no cure so I'll force you away, far away'.
The Last of Us
In the hugely successful, PlayStation-exclusive, Zombie game franchise developed by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us, (about to further broaden its tentacles of despair into the TV market) the Zombies were created by a virulent fungal-disease. Ok, it is not, as far as I can remember, directly linked to the cordyceps disease or any of its variants but, from the stomach-churning description I've given above, it does sound possible. How long will it be before a virus-like fungal organism adapts to infect humans, given that there are a large number of variants already - 100 years, 1000 years, 1 million years? Scientists dabbling in the dark arts of Zombiism do believe that a fungoid-based virus is the most likely cause of a Zombie outbreak; the fungus being primarily suited to forming a complex structure inside a living, or dead, human to replace their nervous system, carrying messages from a corrupted brain to lifeless feet.
DESCRIPTION:
A new movie on Shudder has prompted a delve into the harsh world of parasitic fungoid viruses and, buckle up, as things are about to get scary; they are already here, they grow inside you and explode out of your rotting corpse.
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DATE UPLOADED:
22/08/2021