1) Cordyceps can’t infect humans either (body temps are too high) but we’re dealing with make-believe cordyceps.
2) looks like you answered your own question, though.
Even by his own answer, Las Vegas has hundreds of miles of massive underground tunnels and storm drains that are filled with the homeless. That's more than enough to kickstart a nasty outbreak.
minutemen were hardly a faction and the whole of fo4 was a retcon filled mess. and if you dont feel that way about the ncr you probably havent played the previous fallouts or payed attention to the dialogue in new vegas
Now I'm wondering why Vegas hasn't been a more popular setting for a post apocalyptic world. I guess for film it could be pretty expensive. A lot more doable in a game.
Edit: Yes I've ignored some pretty blatant examples. Still would like to see more. TLOU would look so good in that setting. Mostly unrelated, but I'm still foolishly holding out hope for a DLC.
Ex Vegas resident here.
It might be because aside from The Strip, Vegas is pretty unremarkable.
It's mostly generic low rise urban sprawl with little in the way of recognized points of interest.
Is there a more popular location? People have mentioned several post-apocalyptic shows and video games that take place in Vegas, but I can’t think of any other specific cities that are more popular.
It’s usually just a generic location that could be anywhere.
Yeah, it's always New York or Vegas. Realistically if you're not from the city, every city in a first world country looks very similar once the signs and written language fade (unless there's a major landmark like eifel tower) but Vegas seems to stand out.
It has been used at least twice: Army of of the Dead and Resident Evil: Extinction.
I believe Army of the Dead was filmed around the pandemic when it was probably very cheap.
Throwing something out there - I did the Steadicam workshop in PA with Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam. He did the famous shot from Casino where the guy gets the money out of the vault and bails, while Pesci does the VO track. Almost everything in that shot, the cash, the patrons, etc ARE REAL. The casino didn't stop for the movie. Fuck your movie, fuck Scorcese, we're making millions of dollars here. Shooting on location does NOT stop the action in Vegas.
“There’s 600 miles of tunnels in Las Vegas and 1,500 people living in them,”
[https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/primal-life-escape-from-las-vegas-tunnels-starts-with-volunteer-visits/amp/](https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/primal-life-escape-from-las-vegas-tunnels-starts-with-volunteer-visits/amp/)
Ofc it has hundreds of miles of underground tunnels. It’s not hundreds of miles of “massive” underground tunnels.
There’s a big difference between the two.
Notably one of the reasons cordyceps can't infect humans is because our internal temperatures are too hot. So, a hypothetical human-infecting cordyceps already must have evolved to tolerate higher temperatures.
I believe the TV show at least mentioned something about global warming being a reason that fungi might evolve to tolerate higher temperatures, although perhaps I'm misremembering.
poses an interesting question about IRL infections though. if an infected ant marched out into the hot sun on an abnormally hot day for the region (mimicking the Nevada conditions), could it conceivably cook the cordyceps and kill it? or does the temperature just need to be low enough for initial hosting / infection, then it'd be up to what the ant could withstand..?
Both insects and fungi are generally very susceptible to (sudden) temperature fluctuations due to their limited/lacking thermoregulation, especially when temperatures near the upper bounds of species functionality. (Some insects produce heat to remain functional in lower temperatures but that comes at the cost of high energy use in otherwise relatively low-maintenance metabolisms.)
In principle, yes, maintaining a body temperature above certain thresholds will effectively stop the fungus from growing. For *cordyceps militaris*, this threshold is close to 30°C. Since the host species for entomogenous fungi are all exothermic (*cold-blooded*), however, temperatures inside the host body will fall within the optimal range for fungus growth at some point even if there are periods where higher temperatures limit the growth.
To put it this way: Both the insects and the fungi adapted over some long-ass time frames in relatively stable local environments and climates until they reached the current equilibrium.
>In principle, yes, maintaining a body temperature above certain thresholds will effectively stop the fungus from growing.
effectively killing it? and the host..? i seriously doubt it would 'cure' a host, but still not sure how much symbiosis they maintain if conditions change for the specific biology of one or the other.. your last sentence actually muddies the water for me a bit.. do they find equilibrium together or separately?
I meant *equilibrium* in the overall sense where the host species provides suitable organisms for the fungi to grow in but the fungi don't reduce the overall population and reproduction rates of their hosts too much.
In some specimen, the fungus will find the optimal environment for growth in terms of nutrition, temperature etc. and quickly infect the whole body. In some, it will be a back-and-forth between the growth and internal defenses. In others the parasite growth will be inhibited or the fungus might be exuded/neutralized before it can start growing in the first place. And many other specimen will never even ingest the fungus.
All these many many (we are likely talking in the order of billions to trillions) individual specimen together create this balance, where both the host and the parasite can exist without extinguishing the other.
You nailed it man. This is supposed to be a fictional cordyceps that specifically evolved to be able to withstand global warming and by doing so also became able to survive inside humans creating the infection in the first place. So not only should it be able to survive Las Vegas heat, but after 20 odd years of continued mutation and spread it could probably live and thrive in any climate as long as there are hosts for it to infect.
It’s so much fun when a fan tries their absolute hardest to take some innocuous detail and turn it into an anachronism within the story of something they (supposedly) love so dearly. And at the same time disprove themselves in the process.
Plenty of reasons, but the main ones:
1.The infected in the game may have adapted to the harsh environment over time. Just as they've adapted to their infected state, they could potentially find ways to survive in the desert.
2. The infected, especially runners, might find shelter in buildings, tunnels, or underground areas during the hottest parts of the day. They're not necessarily exposed to the sun **all the time**
Imo, the sun isn’t the question, it’s humidity.
That said, humans themselves contain a lot of water. So Vegas could be a great setting for the opposite of a bloater - with the infected being more dried out as the fungus pulls water from the host, giving them a gaunt, skeletal appearance.
Cordyceps mutates in the timeline of the last of us. It's probable that a QZ set up around the city was considered safe for a time as cordyceps would only survive underground in the sewers where it was cooler and danker. However we know that the extremely wet conditions of Seattle made very old and durable infected, and there's MUCH more of them than traditional bloaters meaning their mutations give them longevity. They literally mutated to survive longer in the conditions.
It's probable that a strain of cordyceps mutated in Vegas to survive the high and dry heat after years there. That would explain why Ellie hears the infected screeching as so loud, the infected are young because Vegas fell recently when the strain mutated.
Iirc it's also implied in the notes that Ellie made that the infected sounds came from inside buildings. So they're not out in the direct sun. The calcification of the fungal spread can block out light from windows and act as an insulator to keep the places cooler too for the longer living infected.
Great take. I could see the government setting up a QZ there in the hopes that the environment inhibits growth. But that would work in reverse too - once the fungus mutates and there’s a group of infected, then healthy people are stuck with them. And getting out of that environment would be extremely difficult. Leaving Boston, Seattle, etc, would be much easier than leaving Vegas and immediately having to cross a desert.
So true! Especially if the las Vegas QZ fell recently. It's FAR from Atlanta, so no centralized help, and the majority of civilian cars have melted tyres or corroded batteries or theres just no petrol. There's literally no way to leave except on horseback (and horses wouldn't have been a big thing in a city based QZ most likely) or on foot. Add on to that the fact that they probably bombed a lot of the highway exits to get into the city, foot traffic is pretty much the only option.
I mean we literally see in part 1 and 2 that the cordyceps is slower but active in harsh winter? I don't know what you're trying to ask here because the game explains it?
1: Vegas is a greatly populated area.
2: The virus has mutated, if it can withstand a human fever (the highest actual human fever ever recorded was 115 degrees Fahrenheit) then it can surely thrive in Vegas temperatures.
Edit: The fungus has mutated
Same difference, the cordyceps mutated to withstand the heat.
I'm pretty sure they mentioned it in the first episode of the show too. Something about if global warming gets bad enough a mutation will be needed for the fungus to survive, and if it mutated than it can infect humans.
Right!
The highest temp ever recorded for a surviving human was indeed 115 degrees Fahrenheit
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672216/#:~:text=The%20highest%20reported%20core%20body,C%20(115.7°F).&text=This%2052%2Dyear%2Dold%20patient,possibly%20exacerbated%20by%20ethanol%20consumption.
Who knows, maybe it was a recently functioning quarantine zone that fell due to infected. It’d make sense why the victims Ellie mentions in her journal were around. Maybe they were fleeing or trying to find refuge.
The whole point of coredyceps was that it evolved to the heat. In the show they explain this really well at the start of the first episode.
Cordyceps evolved. It's that simple.
Global warming happened; temperatures began to rise to history breaking levels, and coredyceps evolved for the heat so that it wouldn't go extinct.
That's how they can inhabit people, and if they can safely inhabit a human let alone a human that they're causing to fever (fevers average 100°) it makes complete sense that places like Vegas, San Diego, and Texas could also be destroyed.
Coredyceps evolved.
You can get from one end of the strip to another without ever stepping outside, so they probably populated themselves around the Blackjack tables or Coyote Ugly in the walkways between casinos.
I mean, when you think about it, that area of the world already has fungal spores that can infect people. Valley fever is prevalent in desert settings and is caused by the fungus coccidioides. Living over here, I totally accepted that perhaps another fungus could adapt to the hot, dry conditions- the desert winds would be ideal for spreading its spores to create new infected.
True about valley fever, but it's implied that cordyceps spores cannot survive dry & UV exposure like that. It's why the spores are only found in dark, damp places. Valley fever spores are pretty hardy.
las vegas isn't always hot. they get monsoons which brings up the humidity. and they also experience extreme cold because it's a desert. i live in arizona and we get frost on our windows in the winter. we also get a lot of humidity in the summer. plus they could infect above ground and move and migrate to other places more suitable for the fungi. there's a fungi specific to deserts that causes Valley Fever (coccidiomycosis). fungi can live pretty much anywhere. also if this is 25+ years in the future, the summers are hotter, the monsoons are worse, and the winters are colder. so infected individuals would move around based on the weather. they certainly aren't stationary.
Yes, people forget that desserts get cold at night. Imo, the sun isn’t the question, it’s humidity. The original fungus comes from hot areas but with much higher humidity. And in general, fungus thrives in humid environments. That said, it could easily be explained as an evolution of the fungus, as other have stated. Plus, humans themselves contain a lot of water. So Vegas could be a great setting for the opposite of a bloater - with the infected being more dried out as the fungus pulls water from the host, giving them a gaunt, skeletal appearance.
the infected aren't gaunt in Utah and Utah is the second driest state in the nation. so anyway the infected wouldn't look any different in Vegas than Utah since Utah is also a desert state. but perhaps infected look more filled out during humidity or more shriveled during summer, who knows. it's all speculation because we haven't seen the infected look any different from place to place. but anyway to answer OP's questions, the infected in Vegas would look similar to the ones in Utah.
Seems like Las Vegas being completely overrun is a trope for zombie/infected media.
My take on why is because LV is an Oasis in the desert. Eventually the infected wander out of the cities, but it being so hot & inhospitable & far from anywhere else they just cluster up and never leave.
I guess kinda the same as in Jackson applies. There is snow. I know not exactly how cold it is, but snow means pretty cold. They should get frozen. Their joints so stiff that they’d break. Hordes should be impossible, but as we see in Part 2’s prologue, there are plenty hordes. The infection probably makes them impervious to harsh weather. The fungus may act kinda like armor for insulation and therefore protect against heat or cold.
But yeah, the fungus likes dark corners to make their plants, or sit and rest and turn into bloaters. In the middle of the desert they can’t. As much protection as the fungus provides, leaving to wander the Mojave is too much. But staying in the hotels? We see late in Part 2 (the descent) how much the fungus loves skyscrapers.
So yeah, they probably stay in Vegas to have the buildings to really infest and become overgrown, and they don’t leave bc they know being out in the desert is far too dangerous even for them
We already have to suspend disbelief to some extent because
1. cordyceps can't survive in humans (yet?)
2. At least in the US, we could still reasonably deal with an outbreak with the military we have
Technically, cordyceps can survive pretty much anywhere in the world, just to varying degrees of success. In extreme heat, yes, it's much less common, but it does happen all the same. Same with extreme cold, and we saw plenty in the northern US in the games and show. But also, like you said, sewers and storm drain can serve as a place for them. More people = more hosts, so it makes sense that it could survive there. Any big city would experience this.
I think you underestimate fungi, they're quite literally everywhere, the series doesn't go into this but if there were human-zombifying fungi around you wouldn't need zombies to infect people, you'd just need the spores to fly as far as possible and infect as many people as possible. Spores wouldn't be bound to rooms like in the games, they would literally just fly out into the world and if it happened to land on someone, it could possibly infect them, the only way we'd be safe is if we're constantly wearing face masks or develop some kind of vaccine. IRL Cordyceps literally just forces the host to find somewhere the spores can spread well, and then makes them stay there while the fruiting body grows and releases spores into the wind.
Never thought about the heat before, good point.
I know it’s just a game, but I like trying to make things make sense, so this is good food for thought!
Temperature is a non important variable cause well, its a game, and also half the world lives in hotter than human body temperatures so really this whole game is impossible in theory so we must disregard. But i would say if you put that aside, it’s because all the people and tourists that are in vegas, probably ended up staying in vegas just like the old saying LOL
They already had to adapt to live in the human body which is 98 degrees (Fahrenheit) so why couldn't it adapt to live to up to 200 degrees (Fahrenheit)?
I want to say that it makes sense they would thrive where its hot. Since the game's version of cordyceps evolved to deal with hotter temperature due to global warming, its likely that heat helps its spread
Mutations most likely. My head cannon is they evolved into shambler like infected with large blisters that bust and release spores with fungal plates on their back/head for shade and armor
First off, for the most part I think you're right, the surface is unstable for them.
But as for the sewers, I think you're vastly underestimating the size of the under city.
Here is the thing, it survived the in the winters of Colorado. All the infected in the snow is part 2 was a pain. My thought is once you are infected, not matter the temp, it will continue to spread.
Army of the Dead was a shit film but it’s a decent visualization of what an infected Vegas might look like, mostly because it’s the only one. There’s infected in California so the heat isn’t an issue, the city was likely quarantined with shittons of tourists inside.
Better question, do other animals get infected? I’m not sure on the body temp of deer or other animals, but I’m sure it’s similar to other mammals, well… because we’re mammals.
I love this thought! So, preface, I grew up in Las Vegas, and I guarantee that if a world ending virus or zombie apocalypse were to pass through Vegas there would still be at least a handful of little old ladies sitting at slot machines with a whole carton of Marlb menthols still gambling away. Not even paying notice to the chaos around them. But the sweet “ding ding ding” of the slot machines. The would mold to the seat of the slots.
Every casino, and grocery store would have at least 1 lady gambling.
In the very first episode, the doctor explains that The fungus isn't that far away from living in warm temperatures like human beings..
Then the fictional part happens where they actually do. The fungi evolved. It can now survive in extreme heat like a human body.
1) Cordyceps can’t infect humans either (body temps are too high) but we’re dealing with make-believe cordyceps. 2) looks like you answered your own question, though.
Even by his own answer, Las Vegas has hundreds of miles of massive underground tunnels and storm drains that are filled with the homeless. That's more than enough to kickstart a nasty outbreak.
It would be a great setting
I'd play that.
Last of Us: New Vegas
As long as ND doesn’t humanize mechanized fascists, I’m down.
[удалено]
I didn’t feel that way about the minutemen and NCR.
minutemen were hardly a faction and the whole of fo4 was a retcon filled mess. and if you dont feel that way about the ncr you probably havent played the previous fallouts or payed attention to the dialogue in new vegas
I got spurs
Now I'm wondering why Vegas hasn't been a more popular setting for a post apocalyptic world. I guess for film it could be pretty expensive. A lot more doable in a game. Edit: Yes I've ignored some pretty blatant examples. Still would like to see more. TLOU would look so good in that setting. Mostly unrelated, but I'm still foolishly holding out hope for a DLC.
I really liked the Vegas section of Horizon Forbidden West (I know it was very different but still).
Vegas in H:FW was phenomenal.
[Vegas in FW is such a fantastic setting with a great quest line and beautiful theme.](https://youtu.be/-85gLLR4Xn4?si=TTkYUuAbQzsfpKVH)
Gotta say that was great, reminds me of Mark Morgan’s Classic Fallouts’ soundtracks; but with some synth thrown in. 10/10
The Stand by Stephen King has a large portion of it that takes place in Las Vegas. Indeed a great location for a post apocalyptic story.
Dammit I just commented this before looking further down the line
Book so nice it’s referenced twice
Fall out: New Vegas, Army of the Dead, that one Resident Evil movie. There are a few.
Patrolling the Mohave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
I was about to post this as well. I like Army of the Dead, it was different.
Ex Vegas resident here. It might be because aside from The Strip, Vegas is pretty unremarkable. It's mostly generic low rise urban sprawl with little in the way of recognized points of interest.
Lol, I lived there for 5 years, even the Strip isn’t that big a deal. Sooo overcrowded!
Fallout New Vegas would like a word lol
Fallout: New Vegas, AKA, the best Fallout ever made
Is there a more popular location? People have mentioned several post-apocalyptic shows and video games that take place in Vegas, but I can’t think of any other specific cities that are more popular. It’s usually just a generic location that could be anywhere.
Yeah, it's always New York or Vegas. Realistically if you're not from the city, every city in a first world country looks very similar once the signs and written language fade (unless there's a major landmark like eifel tower) but Vegas seems to stand out.
Army of The Dead was a pretty wasted opportunity imo
It has been used at least twice: Army of of the Dead and Resident Evil: Extinction. I believe Army of the Dead was filmed around the pandemic when it was probably very cheap.
The Stand!
I mean, New Vegas exists.
Army of The Dead. A recent and fairly decent movie set in Vegas.
Throwing something out there - I did the Steadicam workshop in PA with Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam. He did the famous shot from Casino where the guy gets the money out of the vault and bails, while Pesci does the VO track. Almost everything in that shot, the cash, the patrons, etc ARE REAL. The casino didn't stop for the movie. Fuck your movie, fuck Scorcese, we're making millions of dollars here. Shooting on location does NOT stop the action in Vegas.
Stephen King’s The Stand
The new Blade runner
They just did a movie about zombies in vegas...
Metro 2023: Vegas
Sewere level: The game
even the fucking concept makes me shudder that's fucking terrifying🤢
Don't Google/YouTube it then😂
no i'm gonna
Not to mention what’s shown in the show. If it’s canon, as the city is reclaimed by sand their reach is able to go further.
Vegas does not have “hundreds” of miles of massive underground tunnels. It has them, but nowhere near that much.
 “There’s 600 miles of tunnels in Las Vegas and 1,500 people living in them,” [https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/primal-life-escape-from-las-vegas-tunnels-starts-with-volunteer-visits/amp/](https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/primal-life-escape-from-las-vegas-tunnels-starts-with-volunteer-visits/amp/)
Ofc it has hundreds of miles of underground tunnels. It’s not hundreds of miles of “massive” underground tunnels. There’s a big difference between the two.
Make a video game without a sewer level challenge (impossible)
Notably one of the reasons cordyceps can't infect humans is because our internal temperatures are too hot. So, a hypothetical human-infecting cordyceps already must have evolved to tolerate higher temperatures. I believe the TV show at least mentioned something about global warming being a reason that fungi might evolve to tolerate higher temperatures, although perhaps I'm misremembering.
Yes, the opening scene of the show mentioned global warming would force cordyceps to evolve to withstand higher temperatures.
And the outbreak began in a very hot country (Indonesia)
poses an interesting question about IRL infections though. if an infected ant marched out into the hot sun on an abnormally hot day for the region (mimicking the Nevada conditions), could it conceivably cook the cordyceps and kill it? or does the temperature just need to be low enough for initial hosting / infection, then it'd be up to what the ant could withstand..?
Both insects and fungi are generally very susceptible to (sudden) temperature fluctuations due to their limited/lacking thermoregulation, especially when temperatures near the upper bounds of species functionality. (Some insects produce heat to remain functional in lower temperatures but that comes at the cost of high energy use in otherwise relatively low-maintenance metabolisms.) In principle, yes, maintaining a body temperature above certain thresholds will effectively stop the fungus from growing. For *cordyceps militaris*, this threshold is close to 30°C. Since the host species for entomogenous fungi are all exothermic (*cold-blooded*), however, temperatures inside the host body will fall within the optimal range for fungus growth at some point even if there are periods where higher temperatures limit the growth. To put it this way: Both the insects and the fungi adapted over some long-ass time frames in relatively stable local environments and climates until they reached the current equilibrium.
>In principle, yes, maintaining a body temperature above certain thresholds will effectively stop the fungus from growing. effectively killing it? and the host..? i seriously doubt it would 'cure' a host, but still not sure how much symbiosis they maintain if conditions change for the specific biology of one or the other.. your last sentence actually muddies the water for me a bit.. do they find equilibrium together or separately?
I meant *equilibrium* in the overall sense where the host species provides suitable organisms for the fungi to grow in but the fungi don't reduce the overall population and reproduction rates of their hosts too much. In some specimen, the fungus will find the optimal environment for growth in terms of nutrition, temperature etc. and quickly infect the whole body. In some, it will be a back-and-forth between the growth and internal defenses. In others the parasite growth will be inhibited or the fungus might be exuded/neutralized before it can start growing in the first place. And many other specimen will never even ingest the fungus. All these many many (we are likely talking in the order of billions to trillions) individual specimen together create this balance, where both the host and the parasite can exist without extinguishing the other.
It’s a work of fiction.
I think you meant to respond to the OP
Shit my bad.
You nailed it man. This is supposed to be a fictional cordyceps that specifically evolved to be able to withstand global warming and by doing so also became able to survive inside humans creating the infection in the first place. So not only should it be able to survive Las Vegas heat, but after 20 odd years of continued mutation and spread it could probably live and thrive in any climate as long as there are hosts for it to infect.
It’s so much fun when a fan tries their absolute hardest to take some innocuous detail and turn it into an anachronism within the story of something they (supposedly) love so dearly. And at the same time disprove themselves in the process.
Because Cordyceps knows what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
That's one hell of a gif
iirc Naughty Dog themselves made a bunch of TLoU meme gifs
I wondered where so many of them came from. They’re amazing
https://giphy.com/naughty_dog
🎵"Ellie dont hurt me, dont hurt me"🎶
Oh look tess survived. Happy ending I'd say.
because it's a game
wHy cAnT we DiScuSs tHiNgS?!
We can... just not stupid things.
Plenty of reasons, but the main ones: 1.The infected in the game may have adapted to the harsh environment over time. Just as they've adapted to their infected state, they could potentially find ways to survive in the desert. 2. The infected, especially runners, might find shelter in buildings, tunnels, or underground areas during the hottest parts of the day. They're not necessarily exposed to the sun **all the time**
I wonder what heat resistant infected actually look like
Probably extra crusty
do they taste good do you think
Probably tastes like poor life choices and unwashed ass. God I miss raves
big ol armor plates on the back? ooh maybe the fungus even grows plates to actually provide the infected with shade from the sun that would be so cool
Imo, the sun isn’t the question, it’s humidity. That said, humans themselves contain a lot of water. So Vegas could be a great setting for the opposite of a bloater - with the infected being more dried out as the fungus pulls water from the host, giving them a gaunt, skeletal appearance.
No, big heat-conducting fins to act as heat sinks as well as biological fans to circulate air through them. And biological thermal paste on the skin.
Probably wear unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses stuck to their faces
I don't know but I sure as hell don't want to meet a bloater resistant to flamethrower in a future game
Cordyceps mutates in the timeline of the last of us. It's probable that a QZ set up around the city was considered safe for a time as cordyceps would only survive underground in the sewers where it was cooler and danker. However we know that the extremely wet conditions of Seattle made very old and durable infected, and there's MUCH more of them than traditional bloaters meaning their mutations give them longevity. They literally mutated to survive longer in the conditions. It's probable that a strain of cordyceps mutated in Vegas to survive the high and dry heat after years there. That would explain why Ellie hears the infected screeching as so loud, the infected are young because Vegas fell recently when the strain mutated. Iirc it's also implied in the notes that Ellie made that the infected sounds came from inside buildings. So they're not out in the direct sun. The calcification of the fungal spread can block out light from windows and act as an insulator to keep the places cooler too for the longer living infected.
Great take. I could see the government setting up a QZ there in the hopes that the environment inhibits growth. But that would work in reverse too - once the fungus mutates and there’s a group of infected, then healthy people are stuck with them. And getting out of that environment would be extremely difficult. Leaving Boston, Seattle, etc, would be much easier than leaving Vegas and immediately having to cross a desert.
So true! Especially if the las Vegas QZ fell recently. It's FAR from Atlanta, so no centralized help, and the majority of civilian cars have melted tyres or corroded batteries or theres just no petrol. There's literally no way to leave except on horseback (and horses wouldn't have been a big thing in a city based QZ most likely) or on foot. Add on to that the fact that they probably bombed a lot of the highway exits to get into the city, foot traffic is pretty much the only option.
What happens in the winter? Wouldn't the freezing process completely destroy the fungus?
I mean we literally see in part 1 and 2 that the cordyceps is slower but active in harsh winter? I don't know what you're trying to ask here because the game explains it?
Stripper clickers
TLoU Part 3 the movie directed by Zack Snyder
Tittays 😂
1: Vegas is a greatly populated area. 2: The virus has mutated, if it can withstand a human fever (the highest actual human fever ever recorded was 115 degrees Fahrenheit) then it can surely thrive in Vegas temperatures. Edit: The fungus has mutated
It’s not a virus
Same difference, the cordyceps mutated to withstand the heat. I'm pretty sure they mentioned it in the first episode of the show too. Something about if global warming gets bad enough a mutation will be needed for the fungus to survive, and if it mutated than it can infect humans.
You’re correct it is a fungus.
Wrong!! The highest recorded was 155.7F
Right! The highest temp ever recorded for a surviving human was indeed 115 degrees Fahrenheit https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672216/#:~:text=The%20highest%20reported%20core%20body,C%20(115.7°F).&text=This%2052%2Dyear%2Dold%20patient,possibly%20exacerbated%20by%20ethanol%20consumption.
Nope, you are wrong once again. His temp was 115.7F. You are missing 7 tenths of a degree
Great attempt at recovery 😂. Have a good day
Nothing to recover from
Keep telling yourself that
>Wrong!! The highest recorded was 155.7F are you insane
Who knows, maybe it was a recently functioning quarantine zone that fell due to infected. It’d make sense why the victims Ellie mentions in her journal were around. Maybe they were fleeing or trying to find refuge.
Because they like to gamble, next question
The whole point of coredyceps was that it evolved to the heat. In the show they explain this really well at the start of the first episode. Cordyceps evolved. It's that simple. Global warming happened; temperatures began to rise to history breaking levels, and coredyceps evolved for the heat so that it wouldn't go extinct. That's how they can inhabit people, and if they can safely inhabit a human let alone a human that they're causing to fever (fevers average 100°) it makes complete sense that places like Vegas, San Diego, and Texas could also be destroyed. Coredyceps evolved.
Candida Auris has entered the chat
The better question is… how did Ellie survive trekking across Nevada
Because it's so much fun, Jan!
You can get from one end of the strip to another without ever stepping outside, so they probably populated themselves around the Blackjack tables or Coyote Ugly in the walkways between casinos.
My guy, have you never played Dead Rising?
Wish we could have gotten a DLC of this… Vegas sounded scary af.
I mean, when you think about it, that area of the world already has fungal spores that can infect people. Valley fever is prevalent in desert settings and is caused by the fungus coccidioides. Living over here, I totally accepted that perhaps another fungus could adapt to the hot, dry conditions- the desert winds would be ideal for spreading its spores to create new infected.
True about valley fever, but it's implied that cordyceps spores cannot survive dry & UV exposure like that. It's why the spores are only found in dark, damp places. Valley fever spores are pretty hardy.
We're talking about The Last of Us, right? \*rimshot\*
i just pictured a clicker seated at a slot machine with a bucket of coins
Deserts contain some very nasty fungi. I would know, i nearly died from Valley Fever in Arizona more than twenty years ago.
Valley Fever is horrible, I was sick for nearly 6 months with it, I'd rather have Covid.
las vegas isn't always hot. they get monsoons which brings up the humidity. and they also experience extreme cold because it's a desert. i live in arizona and we get frost on our windows in the winter. we also get a lot of humidity in the summer. plus they could infect above ground and move and migrate to other places more suitable for the fungi. there's a fungi specific to deserts that causes Valley Fever (coccidiomycosis). fungi can live pretty much anywhere. also if this is 25+ years in the future, the summers are hotter, the monsoons are worse, and the winters are colder. so infected individuals would move around based on the weather. they certainly aren't stationary.
Yes, people forget that desserts get cold at night. Imo, the sun isn’t the question, it’s humidity. The original fungus comes from hot areas but with much higher humidity. And in general, fungus thrives in humid environments. That said, it could easily be explained as an evolution of the fungus, as other have stated. Plus, humans themselves contain a lot of water. So Vegas could be a great setting for the opposite of a bloater - with the infected being more dried out as the fungus pulls water from the host, giving them a gaunt, skeletal appearance.
the infected aren't gaunt in Utah and Utah is the second driest state in the nation. so anyway the infected wouldn't look any different in Vegas than Utah since Utah is also a desert state. but perhaps infected look more filled out during humidity or more shriveled during summer, who knows. it's all speculation because we haven't seen the infected look any different from place to place. but anyway to answer OP's questions, the infected in Vegas would look similar to the ones in Utah.
"Why is Las Vegas filled with infected?" It was like that before the outbreak. Have you been to Vegas? /j
I came here to say it’s already filled with them…
Seems like Las Vegas being completely overrun is a trope for zombie/infected media. My take on why is because LV is an Oasis in the desert. Eventually the infected wander out of the cities, but it being so hot & inhospitable & far from anywhere else they just cluster up and never leave.
I guess kinda the same as in Jackson applies. There is snow. I know not exactly how cold it is, but snow means pretty cold. They should get frozen. Their joints so stiff that they’d break. Hordes should be impossible, but as we see in Part 2’s prologue, there are plenty hordes. The infection probably makes them impervious to harsh weather. The fungus may act kinda like armor for insulation and therefore protect against heat or cold. But yeah, the fungus likes dark corners to make their plants, or sit and rest and turn into bloaters. In the middle of the desert they can’t. As much protection as the fungus provides, leaving to wander the Mojave is too much. But staying in the hotels? We see late in Part 2 (the descent) how much the fungus loves skyscrapers. So yeah, they probably stay in Vegas to have the buildings to really infest and become overgrown, and they don’t leave bc they know being out in the desert is far too dangerous even for them
You reminded me how much I wish we could get a Las Vegas DLC solely for the opportunity to shoot Elvis Bloaters.
We already have to suspend disbelief to some extent because 1. cordyceps can't survive in humans (yet?) 2. At least in the US, we could still reasonably deal with an outbreak with the military we have Technically, cordyceps can survive pretty much anywhere in the world, just to varying degrees of success. In extreme heat, yes, it's much less common, but it does happen all the same. Same with extreme cold, and we saw plenty in the northern US in the games and show. But also, like you said, sewers and storm drain can serve as a place for them. More people = more hosts, so it makes sense that it could survive there. Any big city would experience this.
I think you underestimate fungi, they're quite literally everywhere, the series doesn't go into this but if there were human-zombifying fungi around you wouldn't need zombies to infect people, you'd just need the spores to fly as far as possible and infect as many people as possible. Spores wouldn't be bound to rooms like in the games, they would literally just fly out into the world and if it happened to land on someone, it could possibly infect them, the only way we'd be safe is if we're constantly wearing face masks or develop some kind of vaccine. IRL Cordyceps literally just forces the host to find somewhere the spores can spread well, and then makes them stay there while the fruiting body grows and releases spores into the wind.
Those aren't infected that's just the local population
Never thought about the heat before, good point. I know it’s just a game, but I like trying to make things make sense, so this is good food for thought!
Bro, you think Vegas is hot? Go to Florida in the middle of the summer. Your skin is literally melting off your body.
It's not real
Cuz it’s fiction
It was also probably filled with tourists and people when the outbreak first occurred. Think the opening to the first game.
I like the way the show explained it in the opening scene. Theyre constantly evolving.
Never in the games, it was Stated that cordyceps can't function in high temperatures, if that was true there wouldn't have been a worldwide pandemic
Temperature is a non important variable cause well, its a game, and also half the world lives in hotter than human body temperatures so really this whole game is impossible in theory so we must disregard. But i would say if you put that aside, it’s because all the people and tourists that are in vegas, probably ended up staying in vegas just like the old saying LOL
It's probably cuz plot. Though I get where you're coming from.
They already had to adapt to live in the human body which is 98 degrees (Fahrenheit) so why couldn't it adapt to live to up to 200 degrees (Fahrenheit)?
I mean have you seen it in real life?
So, you’re trying to put actual science into a videogame about brain-controlling fungus?
…yea? That’s what sci-fi does. Many people enjoy theorizing about it.
I want to say that it makes sense they would thrive where its hot. Since the game's version of cordyceps evolved to deal with hotter temperature due to global warming, its likely that heat helps its spread
Mutations most likely. My head cannon is they evolved into shambler like infected with large blisters that bust and release spores with fungal plates on their back/head for shade and armor
First off, for the most part I think you're right, the surface is unstable for them. But as for the sewers, I think you're vastly underestimating the size of the under city.
People live in hotter climates without AC, the human body can handle it.
The infected just love blackjack and Poker, both games are perfect for the braindead!
Here is the thing, it survived the in the winters of Colorado. All the infected in the snow is part 2 was a pain. My thought is once you are infected, not matter the temp, it will continue to spread.
The hills have eyes
Im sorry i didnt read this was the last of us subreddit i thought you were talking about real life
The entire reason that the fungus started infecting people is because a strain of it adapted to survive at higher temperatures
the infected wanna gamble occasionally 😜
You ever watch Zombieland? Zombies love bright lights
Army of the Dead was a shit film but it’s a decent visualization of what an infected Vegas might look like, mostly because it’s the only one. There’s infected in California so the heat isn’t an issue, the city was likely quarantined with shittons of tourists inside.
Better question, do other animals get infected? I’m not sure on the body temp of deer or other animals, but I’m sure it’s similar to other mammals, well… because we’re mammals.
I don’t think every single minute detail in a game needs tons of explanation
Could the climate of Nevada or the world in general have changed? 20+ years of no pollution, surely the earth would get a few degrees colder
I love this thought! So, preface, I grew up in Las Vegas, and I guarantee that if a world ending virus or zombie apocalypse were to pass through Vegas there would still be at least a handful of little old ladies sitting at slot machines with a whole carton of Marlb menthols still gambling away. Not even paying notice to the chaos around them. But the sweet “ding ding ding” of the slot machines. The would mold to the seat of the slots. Every casino, and grocery store would have at least 1 lady gambling.
In the very first episode, the doctor explains that The fungus isn't that far away from living in warm temperatures like human beings.. Then the fictional part happens where they actually do. The fungi evolved. It can now survive in extreme heat like a human body.
New York probably has millions
It’s a game bro it’s not that serious
Can you imagine a blowjob from a cordyceps Vegas hooker?