One of the most suspenseful scenes in the HBO series “The Last of Us” comes in its pilot episode, when a scientist predicts that the end of the world won’t come from a viral pandemic, but rather, a fungal one. Smash cut to several decades later — on the show, that is — and a dangerous fungi has mutated to turn most of the human race into monsters whose sole drive is to spread the infection even further.
Of course, this is a work of fiction based on the hit PlayStation videogame of the same name. (There’s also a similar plot in the bestselling 2014 novel “The Girl with All the Gifts,” which was adapted into a 2016 movie.) And many scientists on the HBO show note that the average human body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is far too hot for most fungi to survive in the human body. But it is suggested on the show that, if the world were to get warmer, then some potentially dangerous fungi could evolve to live in hotter environments, such as the human body. And that’s something a growing body of real-world research suggests could play out in real life — although without creating horde …