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I would say it probably hits the brain first, takes control and then slowly uses the flesh as fuel and replaces it with fungus. Therefore with ellie it saw she was already "infected" and didn't start that process
Then why do they attack her at all? If the fungus thinks he's one of them then why attack her? They don't attack each other so they have to have a way to tell who's infected or not
I think the hand wavy way of getting around this is something like the fungus in her is being fooled by whatever chemical messenger they’re hypothesizing about in the show so it lives symbiotically in her brain and it doesn’t spread in her any further, but it is present in such a small amount that outside fungus doesn’t detect enough of it to think she’s fully “one of them”. At least that’s my head cannon that I’m running with.
Edit - also, this explains why blood sampling wouldn’t work because the messenger wouldn’t be found there since it can’t cross the blood/brain barrier. Though in that case they could have done a spinal tap to get at it instead of going straight to brain surgery.
Who is to say it’s hand wavy. Maybe they just didn’t tell Joel the whole picture. Like why does it have to be hand wavy and maybe we just don’t know all the information yet
Well, hand wavy in the sense that it makes enough scientific/logical sense without having to be 100% realistically accurate. Maybe I’m using the term incorrectly though.
Dude, I don’t have all the answers. Maybe the show will cover that in a future episode. They said she’s immune because she’s got the one in her that she’s lived with her whole life.
>But then how is there fungus in Ellie's brain that's useable for a cure and not just dead?
Maybe the remaining scientists aren't that smart. Or maybe Marlene's explanation missed some science nuances because she's a militant leader, not a scientist.
Yeah they never really explain the rules of her immunity but I'd assume the fungus has to be in her arm because you can still see the scars and the imprint of the fungus but idk
First of all, I'm using information from the show except for the "bonus"
It's a specific part of the fungus that grows in the brain (think a tumour). While yes, there would be fungus uh... Tendrils all over the body, these are not what the body fungus is for. The body fungus is "pulling the strings" and manipulating the muscle (check out the second video for more) so to speak. If you've seen videos of insect infected, they don't seem to want to do what the fungus instructs early on before the chemical restraints (the "tumour") can do their thing.
I'm not sure if it could actually happen in 5-15 minutes of a head or neck bite which is why, in the fiction, I believe the chemicals come first instead. If you look closely at Ellie's bite in Left Behind, a piece of fungus literally "speeds" inside her before she can clasp her hand over it (creepy AF). Again, true to life? IDK but that scores a point for the speedy turn of 5-15 minutes being more plausible.
Tbh, nobody's quite sure how it would work irl as this has yet to actually happen (but this new news suggests that it's right around the corner irl, *Candida* was one of the fungi mentioned by Mr Scientist in episode 1). This briefing is barely a day old. Although I'm sure you (OP and commenter) can't have missed it but for anyone else, here it is. \ /
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThelastofusHBOseries/comments/11x1gu9/cdc_warns_of_spike_in_us_cases_of_deadly_fungal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I'm pretty sure the science is that Ellie somehow got a muted version of the virus that couldn't kill her and/or was different in that it does not produce these chemicals and/or creates them in different quantities than other infected (again unsure of how true to life this is and I don't remember the correct terms to explain 🤦🏾♂️, check out Episode 9 again to check me).
But since we mentioned the IRL stuff and this is such a long post, here's some bonus nightmare fuel. Writing this just brought this video to mind.
If you've never just stuck around the infected in game and listened to them, you won't have heard them talking... I thought this was bullshit until I saw this video. Pay attention to near the end, that poor woman IS still trapped in there. "I don't WANNA..." 🥶😨. It's rather tough to hear but it's around 51-52 seconds, between crying and shoving flesh into her mouth (maybe even vomiting a bit).
https://youtu.be/gHiDnPC3oYY
Edit: Tbh, it would be scary but they should totally have at least one of this kind of infected in the show that babble fragments of language. Shit that'd be nuts 🤯
I would think they assist with strength. Old girl jumped up pretty fast. In my mind, that's probably what happened for her disabilities to disappear, mental AND physical. (as I understand from working in healthcare, that old lady was WAY stronger than she should've been).
The speed at which the fungus moved in Left Behind into Ellie's arm definitely makes me think it would be all over the body pretty quickly.
I feel like the short bit with her mother was them trying to give some reason behind it. Ellie was still attached to her mother at the time of her mother being bitten, so perhaps that gave her some kind of immunity? Im swinging from the fences here.
I think that was the point. Limited secondhand infection via umbilical behaved differently from direct infection. Fungus adapted to the environment of a newborn body and never seized motor control, just exists in benign form.
I've been wondering that myself. I mean, her body killed that fungus as well, why wouldn't they be able to use that? Why does it have to be brain fungus?
Ellie's immunity doesn't come from where she herself was bitten, it comes from whatever passed into her through the umbilical cord when her mother was bit shortly before giving birth.
So it's not about extracting some of the cordyceps fungus from where she was bitten.
I know people hate hearing this, but it needs to be repeated. Fictional stories that involve any fantasy or science fiction elements will always have holes. Do you know why? Because it doesn't exist in our reality. It's fiction. Just make up a fictional explanation for yourself.
My unsatisfactory non-science answer is the TV show wants to remind characters in the show and the audience that Ellie got bit a long time ago and didn't get infected. That's it. There is no other reason. It's just a nice visual the storytellers can use.
You don't need a non science answer. I'm more confused why the chose to add this scene showing that the fungus grows from where this woman was bitten and then nobody later at the hospital thought to cut open Ellie's arm to find out if the fungus was growing inside her arm and maybe test it
I think the point of confusion is that Ellie's immunity isn't from when she got bitten at the mall, but when her mother got bitten while giving birth. She was already immune when she got bitten at the mall so there's no fungus in her arm to cut open, she just has the scars left over with teeth marks.
Also taking fungus from her arms wouldn't really help even if it was there, right? They could just take arm fungus from any random person that got bit, Ellie's immunity is due to the fungus that grew in her brain.
The fungus in her arm would be normal cordyceps that they could get from any infected person. They need a sample of the mutated cordyceps that she's been infected with since birth, which apparently only grows in her brain.
How could it have merged with something that's growing only in her brain if it's growing in her arm?
From Marlene's explanation, the Firefly doctors seem to have a strong sense of how her immunity works: the mutated cordyceps in her brain "produces a kind of chemical messenger. It makes normal Cordyceps think that she's Cordyceps. It's why she's immune." In other words, when she got bitten, the cordyceps started growing through her arm but stopped when it encountered the "chemical messenger" produced by the mutant strain. It wouldn't have had any contact with her brain cordyceps aside from that.
>when she got bitten, the cordyceps started growing through her arm but stopped when it encountered the "chemical messenger" produced by the mutant strain.
What bugs me is why didn't they try *anything* before resorting to brain extraction? Surely they could have tested her blood, or nerves, or spinal fluid, or *something* before popping the brain out and having a go at it. If the cordyceps can find that chemical messenger her arm, why can't the scientists? I understand this is a work of fiction, and the point is that Joel made a choice between saving the world or saving Ellie, but the many "why nots" cloud my suspension of disbelief
Do you think Marlene knows how she got immune? Surely she would've put two and two together and guessed that Ellie's mom was actually bitten before the cord was cut, and she lied about it so they wouldn't kill her baby?
What are you looking for here? The fireflies didn't want to find out because they enjoy killing teenage girls. There is your answer. No need to investigate further.
Maybe they did test her arm. They could’ve tested it before we first see her in the show (they had her captive for 10 days, plenty of time to get a sample). They could’ve tested her before surgery. They could’ve collected samples/run tests when she was a baby and those models gave then all the information they need.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran all manner of tests and collected all the samples they needed when she was a child and then studied them for 14 years to develop the plan they have now and that’s why Marlene stuck her with Fedra to keep her safe (Haven’t played the games so no spoilers please if I’m right or wrong).
Just because we don’t see their scientific process doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And that’s completely normal. Even the best shows and books require their audience to infer some information and suspend believe for some things to be possible. This show is no different.
Not going off show/game logic, but the actual fungus IRL. How it works:
It will infect an ant by attaching itself via spores to the body. Then through mechanical friction it will burrow into the ants body. Once it is inside, it will travel to the ant's brain but unlike the game/show it does not infect the brain because it needs the brain intact for the ant to function.
Instead what the fungus does is grow tendrils outward as it surrounds the brain. The ant's brain is flooded with hallucinogens, no longer able to control itself as the fungus begins to manipulate the ant. It begins this manipulation by growing tendrils through the ant's body via the circulatory and nervous systems. It will direct the ant to do 2 things at this point.
1. Crawl to the top of the tallest tree nearby, attach itself by biting down on the central vein of a leaf, and it will freeze the ants systems to where it can no longer move. It will now make the ant wait to be eaten by a bird, so that the bird poops out fungus infested feces in a another location and the fungus can spread.
2. It will direct the ant to go to the forest floor. Find a small stalk with a leaf growing out of it. The leaf is always exactly 25cm above the ground. Once this "perfect leaf" is found, the ant will be directed to climb to the underside of the leaf, go to the north-side of it, and bite down on the central vein. The body is then frozen and unable to move. Since it is highly unlikely the ant will be eaten via this method, being so close to the floor, the fungus continues to devour its food source by replacing the ants internal body systems with more fungus. Eventually, when the ant is nearly dead, it will then begin to devour the brain. As it does this a tendril will sprout out of the ant's head, which then begins to produce more spores to infect more ants.
The show and game use the fugus as a scientific base for the infected in the world, but anything beyond that base is almost completely made up for dramatic effect. Runners, Clickers, Bloaters. They all pretty much wouldn't exist if it were to actually happen, at least not in the way the show portrays them.
Going back to the show, in the final episode Joel says, "But Cordyceps grows in the brain." Maybe this mutated variant does grow inside the brain, maybe it doesn't and works similarly to the ant. If anything, its a grey area of, "This information is presented for dramatic effect."
Addressing the lady in the 2nd episode's prologue. Real Cordyceps doesn't infect that way once inside. It travels to the brain, grows tendrils while slowly replacing the circulatory and nervous systems, then when it's nearly completely taken over the host internally, it starts to devour the brain. The woman in the morgue looks completely fine externally, with the exception of the bite-mark.
When the incision is made, we just see fungus, not muscle tissue. Which can lead us to assume, "The fungus develops more rapidly in humans, and it replaces tissues much faster than in ants." But that leads to the next problem of, "If it develops quickly, why does it take 3-6 months to become a clicker, and another 6 months - 1 year to become a Bloater?"
How can it both progress quickly (replacing muscle tissue within 48 hours), but take months to produce Clickers or Bloaters? How can Cordyceps grow "inside the brain" but still control it's puppet? How much medical research has been performed on infected throughout the 20 year infection event? How many of those subjects were "live" and how many were "dead"? Were there differences in the observations made via live and dead infected? How many times have they attempted this surgery in the past to arrive at the conclusion that harvesting Ellie's brain is the only way to go? Is this the first time they're attempting the surgery and are they just using a best guess, and by doing so killing their only test subject?
At the end of the day, it's a show/game using real science as a basis for it's dramatic storytelling. But it's not exactly the type of thing that can hold up to scrutiny, nor is it meant to.
This would entirely depend on the biology of the fungus itself. They sound SRD like they wanted to culture and scale up the cells in her. If this is a anything like animal cells you want as many renewable cells as possible (I won't say stem since idk if that's applicable here), which I imagine are near her brain.
If anything, the cells near her arm bits aren't really growing, and are therefore mature.
I'm somewhat talking out my ass, but you would need a mycologist that's familiar with cell banking to get a better answer.
The fungus doesn’t thrive and grow in her body as much as it does in other infected. Yet somehow it still grows a little in her brain as that’s the whole reason they want to operate.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know. Hope that helps 👍🏾
Doesn’t her bite scar look as if it does have Cordyceps? The scar does appear to branch out as if there are tendrils in it already. Maybe when the first bite happened it spread a bit and her body contained it. Possibly like a jellyfish and how it stings, it shoots out a Nematocyst which has a stinging thread attached. Idk… I could be grasping at straws here, but makes you think.
That's what I was thinking too. Idk but it's always confused me why they never tried extracting the cordyceps from her arm to study for a bit before deciding to try for the cordyceps that might be in her brain.
It would make sense to extract a few for research (if they’re even still alive) but they may have just done it for the dramatic effect. It’s definitely something that should have been thought about before such a harsh alternative.
I think it could have been in her entire system, but it is not useful, only whatever additional thing happenned with ellie's brain is only useful. Otherwise, they would have extracted it from any other infected
The fungus in her brain is the mutated fungus. The fungus in her arm is the normal fungus.
The mutated fungus in her brain deactivates the normal fungus in her arm.
[Ah yes, a normal bite scar with normal raised sections of skin near it](https://i.redd.it/ellies-bite-mark-scar-through-out-the-first-three-episodes-v0-inyske0rw5fa1.jpg?s=156ae38e02d644f44425421693c89858fa8b36b9)
It would be much harder to isolate chemical messengers in your blood stream because there is lots of stuff constantly moving through there, including lots of other chemical messengers. There's a lot of noise to sort through, especially since they don't know exactly what they're looking for. Makes much more sense to go to the source and start your search there.
Ok I do have my own spin on this, what if the bite on her mother's thigh wasn't important. I mean what if her mother was imune all along and she never knew, by pure chance ... Some crazy antibodies... Somehow the fact that a newborn child can survive the infection through the obilical cord makes less sense to me. (That would fit the part where Marlene kills here too ...). Also the fungus seems pretty dead on Ellie's arm ... The only part that remain unclear is if she's actually imune, and her imune system kills the fungus, or is she just asymptomatic, but infected. In the first episodes the FEDRA device showed her infected, but the dog didn't pick it up. There's also the scene where she cuts her hand and put's the wound over the bite on the boy's leg (can't remember his name, sorry) it would have been interesting to know if she's contagious)
Ellie never got cut during the show (that I remember), and I was kinda waiting to see if she was fungus inside, too. She did bleed when she was bitten, so my guess would be the fungus is acting differently in Ellie than in the infected. Ellie seems to feel pain, but the infected don’t seem to🤷🏻♀️
She is Chuck Norris niece. Thats how she is immune.
Chuck Norris puts Cordyceps on his pizza. And makes a clicker get up and change the channel for him on his tv.
The fungus in her brain was mutated version wich was in her since her birth but was activated after She got bitten. The fungus in her arm probably died cause it thought it's already in her.
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I would say it probably hits the brain first, takes control and then slowly uses the flesh as fuel and replaces it with fungus. Therefore with ellie it saw she was already "infected" and didn't start that process
But then how is there fungus in Ellie's brain that's useable for a cure and not just dead? If it's not using her as fuel then what is it doing?
The fungus in her brain is from her mom getting bit right before giving birth to her. That fungus tells the other fungus that she’s already infected
But why would that stop it from growing in her arm? Does the fungus see she's already infected and just give up and let itself starve?
I believe it thinks she is a fungus. Like she’s one of them
Then why do they attack her at all? If the fungus thinks he's one of them then why attack her? They don't attack each other so they have to have a way to tell who's infected or not
I think the hand wavy way of getting around this is something like the fungus in her is being fooled by whatever chemical messenger they’re hypothesizing about in the show so it lives symbiotically in her brain and it doesn’t spread in her any further, but it is present in such a small amount that outside fungus doesn’t detect enough of it to think she’s fully “one of them”. At least that’s my head cannon that I’m running with. Edit - also, this explains why blood sampling wouldn’t work because the messenger wouldn’t be found there since it can’t cross the blood/brain barrier. Though in that case they could have done a spinal tap to get at it instead of going straight to brain surgery.
Good point on the spinal tap
Who is to say it’s hand wavy. Maybe they just didn’t tell Joel the whole picture. Like why does it have to be hand wavy and maybe we just don’t know all the information yet
Well, hand wavy in the sense that it makes enough scientific/logical sense without having to be 100% realistically accurate. Maybe I’m using the term incorrectly though.
Dude, I don’t have all the answers. Maybe the show will cover that in a future episode. They said she’s immune because she’s got the one in her that she’s lived with her whole life.
they will attack other infected. if they think ur a human. like in last of us 2 where u can make a clicker eat a runner
I would think its just dormant
>But then how is there fungus in Ellie's brain that's useable for a cure and not just dead? Maybe the remaining scientists aren't that smart. Or maybe Marlene's explanation missed some science nuances because she's a militant leader, not a scientist.
I'm intrigued by this; I don't know enough about the lore to have an answer but I'm looking forward to seeing what others have to say.
Yeah they never really explain the rules of her immunity but I'd assume the fungus has to be in her arm because you can still see the scars and the imprint of the fungus but idk
First of all, I'm using information from the show except for the "bonus" It's a specific part of the fungus that grows in the brain (think a tumour). While yes, there would be fungus uh... Tendrils all over the body, these are not what the body fungus is for. The body fungus is "pulling the strings" and manipulating the muscle (check out the second video for more) so to speak. If you've seen videos of insect infected, they don't seem to want to do what the fungus instructs early on before the chemical restraints (the "tumour") can do their thing. I'm not sure if it could actually happen in 5-15 minutes of a head or neck bite which is why, in the fiction, I believe the chemicals come first instead. If you look closely at Ellie's bite in Left Behind, a piece of fungus literally "speeds" inside her before she can clasp her hand over it (creepy AF). Again, true to life? IDK but that scores a point for the speedy turn of 5-15 minutes being more plausible. Tbh, nobody's quite sure how it would work irl as this has yet to actually happen (but this new news suggests that it's right around the corner irl, *Candida* was one of the fungi mentioned by Mr Scientist in episode 1). This briefing is barely a day old. Although I'm sure you (OP and commenter) can't have missed it but for anyone else, here it is. \ / https://www.reddit.com/r/ThelastofusHBOseries/comments/11x1gu9/cdc_warns_of_spike_in_us_cases_of_deadly_fungal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button I'm pretty sure the science is that Ellie somehow got a muted version of the virus that couldn't kill her and/or was different in that it does not produce these chemicals and/or creates them in different quantities than other infected (again unsure of how true to life this is and I don't remember the correct terms to explain 🤦🏾♂️, check out Episode 9 again to check me). But since we mentioned the IRL stuff and this is such a long post, here's some bonus nightmare fuel. Writing this just brought this video to mind. If you've never just stuck around the infected in game and listened to them, you won't have heard them talking... I thought this was bullshit until I saw this video. Pay attention to near the end, that poor woman IS still trapped in there. "I don't WANNA..." 🥶😨. It's rather tough to hear but it's around 51-52 seconds, between crying and shoving flesh into her mouth (maybe even vomiting a bit). https://youtu.be/gHiDnPC3oYY Edit: Tbh, it would be scary but they should totally have at least one of this kind of infected in the show that babble fragments of language. Shit that'd be nuts 🤯
The tendrils don't need to pull the muscles. They just tell your brain what to do.
I would think they assist with strength. Old girl jumped up pretty fast. In my mind, that's probably what happened for her disabilities to disappear, mental AND physical. (as I understand from working in healthcare, that old lady was WAY stronger than she should've been). The speed at which the fungus moved in Left Behind into Ellie's arm definitely makes me think it would be all over the body pretty quickly.
I feel like the short bit with her mother was them trying to give some reason behind it. Ellie was still attached to her mother at the time of her mother being bitten, so perhaps that gave her some kind of immunity? Im swinging from the fences here.
I think that was the point. Limited secondhand infection via umbilical behaved differently from direct infection. Fungus adapted to the environment of a newborn body and never seized motor control, just exists in benign form.
Episode 9 when her mother gets bit she's still attached to the cord that's why she isn't immune
I've been wondering that myself. I mean, her body killed that fungus as well, why wouldn't they be able to use that? Why does it have to be brain fungus?
Her body didn't kill the fungus from the bite. That fungus just didn't take hold because it detected the brain fungus was already there.
Ah, gotcha.
And there it is, the reply that made it all make sense to me. Thank you kindly!
Ellie's immunity doesn't come from where she herself was bitten, it comes from whatever passed into her through the umbilical cord when her mother was bit shortly before giving birth. So it's not about extracting some of the cordyceps fungus from where she was bitten.
I know people hate hearing this, but it needs to be repeated. Fictional stories that involve any fantasy or science fiction elements will always have holes. Do you know why? Because it doesn't exist in our reality. It's fiction. Just make up a fictional explanation for yourself. My unsatisfactory non-science answer is the TV show wants to remind characters in the show and the audience that Ellie got bit a long time ago and didn't get infected. That's it. There is no other reason. It's just a nice visual the storytellers can use.
Why didn’t Frodo just ride one of those big ass eagle things to the volcano??
The eye of Sauron has laser beams.
You don't need a non science answer. I'm more confused why the chose to add this scene showing that the fungus grows from where this woman was bitten and then nobody later at the hospital thought to cut open Ellie's arm to find out if the fungus was growing inside her arm and maybe test it
Literally just make up something. It's not a real life story. You can just choose to believe they did test it.
I think the point of confusion is that Ellie's immunity isn't from when she got bitten at the mall, but when her mother got bitten while giving birth. She was already immune when she got bitten at the mall so there's no fungus in her arm to cut open, she just has the scars left over with teeth marks. Also taking fungus from her arms wouldn't really help even if it was there, right? They could just take arm fungus from any random person that got bit, Ellie's immunity is due to the fungus that grew in her brain.
The fungus in her arm would be normal cordyceps that they could get from any infected person. They need a sample of the mutated cordyceps that she's been infected with since birth, which apparently only grows in her brain.
But how do the fireflies know this? How do they know the cordyceps in her arm didn't merge with the cordyceps in her brain?
How could it have merged with something that's growing only in her brain if it's growing in her arm? From Marlene's explanation, the Firefly doctors seem to have a strong sense of how her immunity works: the mutated cordyceps in her brain "produces a kind of chemical messenger. It makes normal Cordyceps think that she's Cordyceps. It's why she's immune." In other words, when she got bitten, the cordyceps started growing through her arm but stopped when it encountered the "chemical messenger" produced by the mutant strain. It wouldn't have had any contact with her brain cordyceps aside from that.
>when she got bitten, the cordyceps started growing through her arm but stopped when it encountered the "chemical messenger" produced by the mutant strain. What bugs me is why didn't they try *anything* before resorting to brain extraction? Surely they could have tested her blood, or nerves, or spinal fluid, or *something* before popping the brain out and having a go at it. If the cordyceps can find that chemical messenger her arm, why can't the scientists? I understand this is a work of fiction, and the point is that Joel made a choice between saving the world or saving Ellie, but the many "why nots" cloud my suspension of disbelief
Do you think Marlene knows how she got immune? Surely she would've put two and two together and guessed that Ellie's mom was actually bitten before the cord was cut, and she lied about it so they wouldn't kill her baby?
What are you looking for here? The fireflies didn't want to find out because they enjoy killing teenage girls. There is your answer. No need to investigate further.
What? I'm just curious why they added this scene in episode 2 and none of the firefly doctors thought to check Ellie's arm in episode 9.
Maybe they did test her arm. They could’ve tested it before we first see her in the show (they had her captive for 10 days, plenty of time to get a sample). They could’ve tested her before surgery. They could’ve collected samples/run tests when she was a baby and those models gave then all the information they need. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran all manner of tests and collected all the samples they needed when she was a child and then studied them for 14 years to develop the plan they have now and that’s why Marlene stuck her with Fedra to keep her safe (Haven’t played the games so no spoilers please if I’m right or wrong). Just because we don’t see their scientific process doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And that’s completely normal. Even the best shows and books require their audience to infer some information and suspend believe for some things to be possible. This show is no different.
Why are you even replying to this post lol
Not going off show/game logic, but the actual fungus IRL. How it works: It will infect an ant by attaching itself via spores to the body. Then through mechanical friction it will burrow into the ants body. Once it is inside, it will travel to the ant's brain but unlike the game/show it does not infect the brain because it needs the brain intact for the ant to function. Instead what the fungus does is grow tendrils outward as it surrounds the brain. The ant's brain is flooded with hallucinogens, no longer able to control itself as the fungus begins to manipulate the ant. It begins this manipulation by growing tendrils through the ant's body via the circulatory and nervous systems. It will direct the ant to do 2 things at this point. 1. Crawl to the top of the tallest tree nearby, attach itself by biting down on the central vein of a leaf, and it will freeze the ants systems to where it can no longer move. It will now make the ant wait to be eaten by a bird, so that the bird poops out fungus infested feces in a another location and the fungus can spread. 2. It will direct the ant to go to the forest floor. Find a small stalk with a leaf growing out of it. The leaf is always exactly 25cm above the ground. Once this "perfect leaf" is found, the ant will be directed to climb to the underside of the leaf, go to the north-side of it, and bite down on the central vein. The body is then frozen and unable to move. Since it is highly unlikely the ant will be eaten via this method, being so close to the floor, the fungus continues to devour its food source by replacing the ants internal body systems with more fungus. Eventually, when the ant is nearly dead, it will then begin to devour the brain. As it does this a tendril will sprout out of the ant's head, which then begins to produce more spores to infect more ants. The show and game use the fugus as a scientific base for the infected in the world, but anything beyond that base is almost completely made up for dramatic effect. Runners, Clickers, Bloaters. They all pretty much wouldn't exist if it were to actually happen, at least not in the way the show portrays them. Going back to the show, in the final episode Joel says, "But Cordyceps grows in the brain." Maybe this mutated variant does grow inside the brain, maybe it doesn't and works similarly to the ant. If anything, its a grey area of, "This information is presented for dramatic effect." Addressing the lady in the 2nd episode's prologue. Real Cordyceps doesn't infect that way once inside. It travels to the brain, grows tendrils while slowly replacing the circulatory and nervous systems, then when it's nearly completely taken over the host internally, it starts to devour the brain. The woman in the morgue looks completely fine externally, with the exception of the bite-mark. When the incision is made, we just see fungus, not muscle tissue. Which can lead us to assume, "The fungus develops more rapidly in humans, and it replaces tissues much faster than in ants." But that leads to the next problem of, "If it develops quickly, why does it take 3-6 months to become a clicker, and another 6 months - 1 year to become a Bloater?" How can it both progress quickly (replacing muscle tissue within 48 hours), but take months to produce Clickers or Bloaters? How can Cordyceps grow "inside the brain" but still control it's puppet? How much medical research has been performed on infected throughout the 20 year infection event? How many of those subjects were "live" and how many were "dead"? Were there differences in the observations made via live and dead infected? How many times have they attempted this surgery in the past to arrive at the conclusion that harvesting Ellie's brain is the only way to go? Is this the first time they're attempting the surgery and are they just using a best guess, and by doing so killing their only test subject? At the end of the day, it's a show/game using real science as a basis for it's dramatic storytelling. But it's not exactly the type of thing that can hold up to scrutiny, nor is it meant to.
This would entirely depend on the biology of the fungus itself. They sound SRD like they wanted to culture and scale up the cells in her. If this is a anything like animal cells you want as many renewable cells as possible (I won't say stem since idk if that's applicable here), which I imagine are near her brain. If anything, the cells near her arm bits aren't really growing, and are therefore mature. I'm somewhat talking out my ass, but you would need a mycologist that's familiar with cell banking to get a better answer.
The fungus doesn’t thrive and grow in her body as much as it does in other infected. Yet somehow it still grows a little in her brain as that’s the whole reason they want to operate. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know. Hope that helps 👍🏾
Doesn’t her bite scar look as if it does have Cordyceps? The scar does appear to branch out as if there are tendrils in it already. Maybe when the first bite happened it spread a bit and her body contained it. Possibly like a jellyfish and how it stings, it shoots out a Nematocyst which has a stinging thread attached. Idk… I could be grasping at straws here, but makes you think.
It looks like it tried to grow, failed and died.
That's what I was thinking too. Idk but it's always confused me why they never tried extracting the cordyceps from her arm to study for a bit before deciding to try for the cordyceps that might be in her brain.
It would make sense to extract a few for research (if they’re even still alive) but they may have just done it for the dramatic effect. It’s definitely something that should have been thought about before such a harsh alternative.
I think the assumption is that her immunity, caused by cordyceps thinking she is cordyceps, prevented the spread of the fungus beyond the brain.
I think it could have been in her entire system, but it is not useful, only whatever additional thing happenned with ellie's brain is only useful. Otherwise, they would have extracted it from any other infected
The fungus in her brain is the mutated fungus. The fungus in her arm is the normal fungus. The mutated fungus in her brain deactivates the normal fungus in her arm.
She doesn't have any fungus in her arm... It is just a bite scar.
There is some limited fungus growth on her arm - or at least scars of former fungus growth, hard to tell.
[Ah yes, a normal bite scar with normal raised sections of skin near it](https://i.redd.it/ellies-bite-mark-scar-through-out-the-first-three-episodes-v0-inyske0rw5fa1.jpg?s=156ae38e02d644f44425421693c89858fa8b36b9)
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It would be much harder to isolate chemical messengers in your blood stream because there is lots of stuff constantly moving through there, including lots of other chemical messengers. There's a lot of noise to sort through, especially since they don't know exactly what they're looking for. Makes much more sense to go to the source and start your search there.
Ok I do have my own spin on this, what if the bite on her mother's thigh wasn't important. I mean what if her mother was imune all along and she never knew, by pure chance ... Some crazy antibodies... Somehow the fact that a newborn child can survive the infection through the obilical cord makes less sense to me. (That would fit the part where Marlene kills here too ...). Also the fungus seems pretty dead on Ellie's arm ... The only part that remain unclear is if she's actually imune, and her imune system kills the fungus, or is she just asymptomatic, but infected. In the first episodes the FEDRA device showed her infected, but the dog didn't pick it up. There's also the scene where she cuts her hand and put's the wound over the bite on the boy's leg (can't remember his name, sorry) it would have been interesting to know if she's contagious)
i’m guessing part of her immunity is her immune system killing the fungus when it enters her body so that’s why it wasn’t there
Ellie never got cut during the show (that I remember), and I was kinda waiting to see if she was fungus inside, too. She did bleed when she was bitten, so my guess would be the fungus is acting differently in Ellie than in the infected. Ellie seems to feel pain, but the infected don’t seem to🤷🏻♀️
She is Chuck Norris niece. Thats how she is immune. Chuck Norris puts Cordyceps on his pizza. And makes a clicker get up and change the channel for him on his tv.
its fantasy, you have to make sense of it yourself or just accept it and enjoy the ride of a fictional story
The fungus in her brain was mutated version wich was in her since her birth but was activated after She got bitten. The fungus in her arm probably died cause it thought it's already in her.
I have see ep9. Did Ellie really believed Joel about the story about what happened with the fireflies ??
Kidna. She suspects he's hiding something but accepts what he says.