This episode was inspired by the super popular and super awesome video game and HBO adaptation “The Last of Us”. In the series, cordyceps evolve to spawn a zombie pandemic but is this more than science fiction? While nothing of this magnitude is likely to happen, the fungus ergot has been cited as the possible cause of an event in 1951 where many people in a small town had some pretty intense hallucinations after eating bread made from questionable flour. Ergot is also a possible explanation for the 1518 Dancing Plague in Strasbourg where it is said hundreds of people were compelled to dance even though they were exhausted and in pain. Some people even lost their lives. The potential cures for the Dancing Plague were almost as weird as the affliction itself!
Warning: some language or themes may not be suitable for all ages.
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