Forget zombies and natural disasters, another, unsuspected threat could be responsible for the loss of millions of lives. It comes from toxic mushrooms. No, you're not in The Last of Us.
Forget zombies and major disasters
In movies, TV shows, and video games, the post-apocalyptic genre is still as attractive as ever. A new world plunged into desolation and emptied of -almost- all forms of life, in which the last humans try to survive.
Very often, cultural media highlight viruses (The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, World War Z), nuclear wars (Fallout, Mad Max: Fury Road), gradual global warming (The Snowpiercer, Blade Runner, Horizon), a revolt of the machines (The Matrix, Terminator) or alien invasions (Edge of Tomorrow, Oblivion, Independence Day, War of the Worlds).
9 million lives in danger in Europe
Among the aforementioned examples, some are the most likely to wipe out humanity in the coming hundreds of years. Yet, another threat would come from our green forests and the ambient mold: toxic mushrooms. A scenario that immediately brings to mind The Last of Us and its Cordyceps.
Some researchers have looked at the case of toxic mushrooms as a potential culprit of a future health catastrophe. According to them, they could proliferate exponentially in the coming decades and cause a major health catastrophe.
"Fungi are relatively understudied compared to viruses and parasites, but maps show that fungal pathogens will likely affect most parts of the world in the future," warns Norman van Rhijn, lead author of a study led by the University of Manchester. The causes are global warming and the use of fossil fuels.
However, not all mushroom species are affected. Of the estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million (according to a 2017 study published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum), hundreds of thousands of fungal species are targeted (they represent only 10% of the total).
In different scenarios studied up to 2100, based on rising temperatures, extreme weather events and a drastic increase in humidity, the study shows that if the world still depends on fossil fuels in a few decades, certain fungi such as Aspergillus flavus (responsible for agricultural rot and very harmful to mammals) and Aspergillus fumigatus (potentially responsible for fatal infections in some people) will grow so much that they would endanger more than 9 million people in Europe alone, or 1.20% of the population on the old continent.
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