My daughter was back for a week and hooked me on The Last of Us, watching all nine episodes over the course of three nights. It wasn't long before Daina got hooked as well, as she is a sucker for survivalist tales, especially in the wake of the pandemic and ongoing war in Ukraine, hoping for some good tips. After watching the HBO series, Daina wants to restock the basement as we tapped into a lot of the goods down there, as we are too lazy to go to the store sometimes.
I often wonder why we live with such dread of the future. The creators of this series make a convincing argument that it will be mycelium that gets us in the end. It is everywhere, with a vast network that has been referred to as nature's internet. Who knows maybe it is already controlling our lives in ways we don't understand?
Whatever the case, it seems most people are very pessimistic about the future. Whether it be climate change, pandemics or just the general sad state of politics, very few people seem to think things will get better in time, especially with all the alarms being sounded. We went through this before. The Doomsday Clock has created by atomic scientists in 1947 with the advent of the atomic bomb and is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, which in itself would be a good title for an apocalyptic movie. It's just that now we have more than atomic bombs to worry about.
We are much more aware of the dangers than we ever were before. I remember the drills of hiding under your school desk in case a hydrogen bomb was dropped. Today, kids go through the same drills in fear of active shooters ambushing their schools. A much more real threat. They say that in any given year no less than 100,000 students are exposed to a school shooting.
We didn't think of hydrogen bombs as anything more than an existential threat until a long list of close calls was released in 2014 when these federal documents were declassified. There was even a disastrous mishap over North Carolina in 1961, which went unreported as the government had previously kept such events under its hat. Just the same, there were plenty of movies on the subject, most of them very campy like The Toxic Avenger. By the 1980s, what to do with all the nuclear waste became a serious concern.
It hadn't been that long since Three Mile Island imploded, which is now the subject of a Netflix documentary series. Nuclear power plants were the great leap into the future, many believing that it would wean the US off foreign oil after the 1973 Oil Crisis. However, this meltdown drastically altered perceptions. The biggest worries were over the long term impact of exposure to nuclear radiation as at least 300 cancer cases were believed to be linked to the catastrophe, not to mention the impact the meltdown had on water supply and regional farming.
This was taken to the next level when Chernobyl melted down in 1986, creating far more damage and affecting a much broader region. Daina told me that you weren't allowed to eat mushrooms for many years afterward as so much of the nuclear waste had seeped into the ground water and was being spread through the vast network of mycelium underground. The distance between Chernobyl and Vilnius is roughly 500 kilometers. Seems to me that the creators of The Last of Us missed a golden opportunity here, as one of them produced the HBO limited drama series.
Much of the filming was here in Lithuania, as Chernobyl itself is still under heavy quarantine. Of course that doesn't stop social media influencers form using it as a back drop, as apparently you have to strip down to your skivvies and put on a hazmat suit before entering the quarantine zone. Maximum time allowed is three hours. Today, access has been closed due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
For the most part, governments have learned to contain all these catastrophes but the feeling remains that we are only one incident away from the whole world going up in a giant mushroom cloud. Russia has used this nuclear peril to great effect in the war, threatening tactical nuclear strikes if they don't get their way in Ukraine, which is why we currently stand at "90 Seconds to Midnight."
Far worse is all the nuclear waste that has been dumped in Russia, much of it in the Arctic Circle, with the naive belief it is being well tended. Germany saw this as one of the many expedient solutions to deal with its nuclear waste crisis. I suppose this led in part to the captivating apocalyptic series Dark. The first season was excellent!
I suppose mycelium doesn't need nuclear waste to morph into some sort of human parasite. The creators did their research and came across real life cordyceps in the form of zombie ants. The fungus needs a relatively low body temperature to thrive. Humans are apparently too warm blooded, but factor in climate change and the fungal parasite can now live in much warmer hosts. With no known cure or vaccine, it essentially becomes the end of the human race as we know it.
However, I was pleased to see that the creators focused less on the zombies and more on how surviving humans deal with their new world. The format allows for a neverending series as it is essentially broken down into short stories with a pair of intrepid guides that lead us through the wasteland that the United States has become. The series only scratched the surface of other countries like Indonesia. I think HBO has struck the proverbial gold mine here.
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