The Last of Us is Nightmare Fuel

My daughter Emma and I started watching The Last of Us late last week -- about the time the Giants were getting blown out by the Eagles in the NFC Divisional Round -- and I gotta say that although I am very much enjoying the show, man, it is pure nightmare fuel.

Like, I had a literal nightmare after that first episode.

Let me say up front that I've never played The Last of Us the game -- or really, any video game -- nor do I care how accurately or inacurately the show portrays what happened in other media. My sole concern is for how much I personally enjoy the show. None of the rest of whatever people talk about in reference to these TV adaptations means anything to me whatsoever.

With that said, the show so far has really struck a nerve. I mean, I don't know how many folks out there have ever raised girls of Ellie's age, but I've now done it twice, and that makes a lot of this stuff just a little bit poignant. There's this sense when you're a father of sheparding your kids through a dark, scary, dangerous world, and that can be hard to shake. 

Reality is that you can't protect them from everything. At the end of the day, the best you can do is to teach them to stand on their own. 

Now, obviously this is a TV show. It dials our natural paranoias up to a million. Even so, man, it is crazy out there. Plus, this is a show about a pandemic, and we've all just gone through a pandemic. It's freaky. Add in that the show and its world are so well-imagined, and at least for me, it's been all too easy to see myself in this particular timeline.

Like I said, I had a literal nightmare about it.

I've had to remind myself a few times that the show takes more than a few liberties with both science and tactics. For example, the cordyceps infection in the show is nowhere near as virulent as, say, the real  coronavirus was, but they show it spreading across the world ten thousand times faster than the actual pandemic did in real life. In fact, the show gives cordyceps something like a 24 hour latency period, which is actually pretty short. What we've learned from the real pandemic is that longer latency periods are much, much more dangerous. Bottom line, no one is going to let someone with a cordyceps infection on an airplane, and with a mere 24 hour latency period, that means that we'd need relatively short quarantine periods to prevent widespread travel of the infected. So I'm not sure this thing is ever getting out of Jakrata. By comparison, the reverse was true with the 'Rona. Since the latency period was so long, infected folks traveled everywhere without realizing that they were spreading the virus.

All of this comes before considering that cordyceps is spread by biting. In the real world, body armor is a thing. Hell, even most industrial processes require common equipment like cut-resistant gloves, face shield, and other types of heavy clothing. Ain't no zombie biting through what is effectively light chainmail and/or something like 13 kV gloves and sleeves.

These are thick gloves and sleeves, often paired with a full face shield.

The military response in the pilot episode was both horrifying and wacko insane. Firstly, because it takes way more than a few hours to mobilize a massive military deployment, and secondly because this show, like a lot of these shows, badly misses the importance of basic military necessities like heavy machine guns. I mean, zombies basically use human wave attacks. 

This is not an unknown tactic, nor is it one that's particularly difficult to defeat. 

You need two of these to create interlocking fields
of fire. But that would definitely stop a wave of zombies.

I feel like this cordyceps pandemic is something that a triple battalion basic load of .50 cal machine guns and claymores could handle, though obviously a LOT of shit would have to go down before we got to that stage in any kind of realistic domestic situation. 

Still, right tool for the job. In this case, that means we don't start with precision bombing.

My final thought is a take from the later stages of the book World War Z. Fungis doesn't tend to spread in freezing temperatures. Cold might not kill most fungus, but it will definitely send them into a dormant state, allowing humanity some kind of time to think and react. This being a show that starts in Boston, the obvious move here is to wait until winter and then travel through the Upper Midwest while it's cold. Even walking, this is far from impossible.

Anyway. I had to tell myself all of this because the show itself scared the crap out of me. Background, visuals, makeup, basic story beats... all of it.

Take that for what it's worth.