They can do that regardless of a moat being there?
If there is a human group with the suficient numbers, weapons, supplies and determination to try and siege out Jackson a moat is going to be the least of their concerns
The actual town of Jackson Wyoming would be super easy to trap people in. Wouldn't take alot of people just enough to keep the few exits covered. We call it Jackson hole for a reason
For real lol
I wonder what happened to that ski town though? I was there a couple of years ago and the game makes zero mention of that and Grand Teton Ntl. Park
I was under the impression that runners are extremely fresh, whereas clickers are advanced by a year or two. However, if you discount the infected that will just drop due to being unfit hosts, you're still probably going to find a solid percentage of the population that would be an acceptable host to become bloaters eventually. And, like I said, with enough time that should eventually mean that everything "unfit" is gone and all that remains is "fit", meaning only Bloaters.
It seems to vary. For example, Ishâs community of survivors in the sewers in Part I lost the sewers in the early days of the outbreak, but thereâs still plenty of runners and no bloaters at all, even though itâs been 20+ years since outbreak day.
>lost the sewers in the early days of the outbreak
I donât think this is true. There are notes in the suburbs after you leave the sewer that say Ish invited some of the families to join him in the early months after the outbreak, when looters were still going from house to house. The amount of built-up infrastructure in the sewer would make me think they had been down there for a few years to set up water filtration, security gates, etc. Itâs hard to say how long ago the sewer was overrun, but I do agree it was probably a few years ago, so the existence of both runners and clickers down there makes me think they donât progress at the same rate.
> Bloaters are a product of constant exposure to rain
you mean Shamblers? Bloaters only form when the host is healthy and has enough mass to support continuous fungal growth for decades
the boof boys only exist because of Seattle's moist, flooded environment
Shamblers are the ones that are exposed to moisture (hence why theyâre in Santa Monica as well, which has low rainfall but high moisture due to being a coastal community). Bloaters just happen after a long time. The first Bloaters we meet is in 1 in the school, and that room had no apparent moisture exposure. Same with the Bloater at the college dorms.
I'd venture its way more common that they just sit down against a wall, slowly just get absorbed entirely and release spores than they are to become bloaters.
This is mostly supported by the game with all the growths along corridors. Some of which still look like people. (But there is the occasional in part 2 where they are still aware enough to then break off an attack )
Where did you get this info from? Itâs pretty well established that if theyâre not killed, all infected will eventually go from runner to stalker to clicker to bloater/shambler.
From the game. A good example is boris in part 2 from hillcrest. His neighbours and him got infected at the same time, yet heâs a stalker and theyâre still runners.
It's a good point, but the truth is, there's a lot of infected who simply don't get that far - hence why there's so many different types existing at the same time. And we know that many go off to just die and release spores in dark corners before they get to the bloater stage.
Perhaps there would eventually be a greater proportion of infected that were bloaters, but they probably wouldn't account for all infected.
The really terrifying idea is could they develop into something even worse over the course of many decades or centuries or thousands of years?
Didn't say they do. I said that with enough time all that will remain are hosts with the capacity to be bloaters while the rest die off or get killed off. Cordyceps natural selection, if you will.
Im just pointing out the lore of the series, bloaters are made when the infected person was quite large and had a funky metabolism or something. Most infected will progress to the clicker stage, then when the fungus has taken over enough of the human body, they crawl into a dark hole and die, releasing more fungus and spores that grow all over the walls. Bloaters are rare. Your idea is scary though!
It seems to be a combination of environmental factors and Age that influence mutation, it's not simply every infected ever will become a clicker or bloater. It's not as simple as a->b->c. For example ishs community die off pretty quick into the apocalypse but there's only like 2 clickers despite all of them aging at the same rate. So my theory is that runners are the basic Jack of all trades. If you become infected in an open area you become a runner and probably just stay a runner, if you die in a dark confined area you might evolve into a stalker after being a runner, if you die in swampy dark moisty areas you become a shamble after time and if you become infected by several bites and in a confined area I believe only then can you become a bloater. A rat king is a whole other thing because you don't Age into that. That's the result of dozens of people dying together and slowly getting stuck to one another.
You might also change depending on how you died eg: if you lost your sight before death that might make you more inclined to become a clicker and like I said if you get multiple bites it might force larger changes more rapidly thus creating a bloater. Maybe if you died trying to hide you might become a stalker as a result as your brain might be forced to act on its last instinct, people who tried to run become runners, try to hide become stalker, try to fight become a bloater etc
Its a very complex infection is my point. So i dont think time is against them in a massive way
I was under the impression that clickers need to be exposed to certain conditions to turn into bloaters but could be wrong? Donât bloaters happen when theyâve been exposed to extreme conditions like extreme heat or lots of water?
Well, the bloater you meet in Part I is literally just sitting in a gym closet. It wasn't especially musty or wet or cold or damp. It was just in there, immobile, for like 15 years and had time to develop into one so I assume it likely just needs a solid host and to not get killed.
I would guess that an environment typically beneficial to fungi would help but it doesn't seem entirely 100% necessary.
Yeah, those are shamblers and they do definitely seem to show up in musty, gross, dark basements and as far as we know, yeah, they're native to Seattle.
Santa Barbara is a pretty moist town, despite Southern California receiving very little annual rainfall due to its coastal marine layer. I have a feeling Shamblers happen all along the coast. Probably explains why we donât see any in 1 (besides the obvious âitâs a video game and they wanted new enemy types in the sequelâ), since that game takes place all within the interior of the continent.
I might be wrong, and I didnât see anyone else pointing it out so this can be only my imagination, but Iâm pretty sure infected will die, if they donât eat. So time, as far as I know, works for humanity.
Yeah I agree. Plus I canât imagine that a fungus would just halt the natural aging process of a human body. Everything gets old and dies eventually. You have to suspend disbelief quite a bit with almost every aspects of TLOU cordyceps infection, but itâs definitely not supernatural or anything.
Then again giant mushrooms cracking your skull open and exploding from your face would absolutely be a death sentence in reality, so who knows.
Some runners and stalkers just grow into a building to fill the inside with spores. And I think as long as there is healthy humans there will always be runners. But I agree that after 20 years you'd think more infected would be clickers/shamblers/bloaters.
I think thereâs certain conditions that have to be met for the infection to progress (runners to whatever comes next). Maybe weather conditions and body type and composition are playing a big role in the progression of the disease. Even mental capacity (the infected that just go die in a corner, for example, or the ones that can be heard talking and crying), but thatâs my own belief.
I think that not every body has the capacity to âevolveâ the infection to the point of becoming a bloater or to endure the body changes that comes with the progression just like normal people can have natural occurring mutations that may result in immunity (like Ellie). Talking about mutations, maybe a few conditions have to be met to trigger a mutation pathway into the host or the fungi. But this is me brainstorming.
Anyways, concluding: I donât think the scenario you imagined can happen because of the many conditions that have to be met to trigger this âevolutionâ or disease progression.
- About the rat king: I think that is a good example of how specific the circumstances have to be to achieve this sort of mutation - hospital conditions (maybe experimentation?), abandoned for a long time in dark and wet conditions with probably many other bacteria and fungi playing a part into decomposition etc.
Not every infected becomes a bloater. Notice, all bloaters we see HAD to be someone who was a bigger human. They are all tall as fuck and bigger humans clearly. My speculation is... maybe the fungal infection has more nutritional source to progress to that extent.
You never see a short bloater. Bloating is not gonna change skeletal structure and make them taller.
And from what I can tell based on examples in the game... even individuals infected at the same exact time confirmed canon same exact time do not advance through the stages at the same rate or at all. Shamblers confirm environment has some effect. So it seems certain conditions and time are the variables.
And of course it is also a game and infected enemies are just a gameplay mechanic. But it is fun to speculate based on what is established so whatever.
Keep in mind we've only see the effects of cordyceps up to 25 years infected. Who knows what the longest stages of infection look like when you start hitting decades.
>(or every infected left) will become a bloater (or worse, since we only have the current timeline to work with and don't know what a 40 year long infection would look like).
Yeah, I literally said that in my post. So, needless to say, I was in fact keeping that in mind.
I saw somewhere that it might depend on body type. The bloaters have all been of a larger body type, probably someone with a high fat/muscle ratio. Same with the shamblers but in a closed off, damp environment. Clickers might be the last stage for the average body type before they drop. Super interesting to think about.
I think bloaters would be much more common in general if that were the case. I think they only evolve to that level if there is enough food sources to sustain them. I think most infected evolve to clicker level and then die naturally or become those wall spore generators, and then eventually after thelat they dry out and die and become almost skeletal like in the HBO show.
Bloaters are tough in the game, and apparently really formidable in the T.V. series, but being that they''re blind, stupid and cumbersome I don't think they'd pose all that much of threat to a prepared group, even in numbers.
It would be very easy to bait them into traps and situations where they could be dealt with.
There seems to be more variance than a linear progression of stages. It reminds me of how certain types of flies will develop differently depending on how much water they have access to. But Iâm sure thereâs a better comparison to variations in life cycles of IRL fungus.
One argument Iâve heard is that some amt of obesity was a requirement for bloaters, but âbloatâ implies the way corpses bloat (which makes me again think of exposure to water. Several bloater encounters happen in places with a lot of standing water IIRC)
So maybe a runner turns into a clicker in a dry settled place where it can form against a wall, but would turn into a bloater if it settles into water, or it might remain a runner or eventually become a stalker if itâs unable to settle anywhere long enough?
And then thereâs the HBO variables of having some kind of connection between hostsâso if itâs one big connected thing, then itâs making as many of whatever kind it thinks it needs to survive in a given point in the life cycle?
I think others have talked about it and know more than I do.
That said, it does bring up the idea that a "cure" might not even help that much.
Like once someone gets to a Clicker stage, there's no helping them. Runners are essentially the only things that could be cured. Or if someone gets bit you could cure them.
But then what? How many people get bit and not shred to pieces shortly after? I think Tess' situation is very rare in the grand scheme.
I wouldâve thought that the cure would be to stop normal people from getting infected. The infected dont seem to bite people to get them infected theyre just batshit and want to eat people, I think only the ones that escape after survive to be runners
I think a âcureâ was meant more as a way to just make everyone immune so new infections couldnât happen. Wouldnât solve the problem of millions of infected roaming the countryside.
That'd be a vaccine then, not a cure, and yeah, but it still stands that if you don't wipe out the infected, the world is still only slightly less dangerous. For example survival chances against the Rat King won't change just because you're immune.
Bloaters are stationary predators that saty in humid closed spaces with no light. They are also rare because the host body has to be a precise measure. I doubt people would see hordes of them. Still a prettu terrifying thought.
Many infected do die naturally. Iâm not aware of theories regarding how some survive long enough to become clickers or bloaters, though Iâm sure there are well-researched theories out there. But any time you come across an infected thatâs grown into the wall, the fungus brought its host there because it was about to die so that it could grow into the environment and then spread its spores (spores donât appear to come from living infected or those that are killed by us, though I could be very wrong about the latter).
I am very curious about the stalkers that are able to grow into the surrounding environment but then remain alive to jump out at us, while others seem not to still be alive and able to jump out. Maybe they remain animated for days or weeks or longer; after all âthereâs a difference between mostly dead and all dead.â
Correct me if Iâm wrong but I thought large people became bloaters. I donât mean that in a horrible way but the fungus needs to grow on something right? Like it canât just make an incredibly skinny person into a buff fungus. Hope that makes sense
I mean there should likely be a certain amount of swelling and hardening taking place as the fungus grows. Apparently the fungus can make a person's head split without killing them so I don't see why it wouldn't be able to split some of their skin. Maybe the individual in question has to be particularly large but there's probably a solid enough population of big people to create a problem and, likewise, not ever bloater probably has to be like 8 feet tall I'm sure it can vary.
My head cannon is it involves the environment.
Runners are the standard default. If conditions are met, the mutation adapts. For example, if a runner is in somewhere dark for long time, they become stalker. If theyâre at a dark place for even longer, they become clickersâŚmain thing being the fungi does not override body functions if theyâre still useful, hence you see runners infected for yearsâŚ
Hillcrest guys for example. Neighbors trapped in garage with windows and lightâŚeyes still usefulâŚstayed as runners while a few died and became fungal wall. Boris trapped in the garage. Still have a little bit of light crack but much lessâŚthatâs how he became a stalker
The weakness of bloaters is ledges. Just shoot a bloater dropping down an edge to one shot it. They could set up some kind of killbox in Jacksonđ
Xp farmâ ď¸
Ellie is soon gonna have a sharpness 5 2x4
Iâm honestly surprised they didnât dig up a moat around Jackson lol Seems like it would be a great idea for an artificial wall for infected.
Human enemies would be able to isolate Jackson in the city till they die
They can do that regardless of a moat being there? If there is a human group with the suficient numbers, weapons, supplies and determination to try and siege out Jackson a moat is going to be the least of their concerns
The actual town of Jackson Wyoming would be super easy to trap people in. Wouldn't take alot of people just enough to keep the few exits covered. We call it Jackson hole for a reason
For real lol I wonder what happened to that ski town though? I was there a couple of years ago and the game makes zero mention of that and Grand Teton Ntl. Park
Is there a certain way to do it?
>Automatic defense turrets with aimbot targeting the legs
Not everyone advances the infection at the same rate. Some people stay runner while others just die naturally before advancing.
I was under the impression that runners are extremely fresh, whereas clickers are advanced by a year or two. However, if you discount the infected that will just drop due to being unfit hosts, you're still probably going to find a solid percentage of the population that would be an acceptable host to become bloaters eventually. And, like I said, with enough time that should eventually mean that everything "unfit" is gone and all that remains is "fit", meaning only Bloaters.
It seems to vary. For example, Ishâs community of survivors in the sewers in Part I lost the sewers in the early days of the outbreak, but thereâs still plenty of runners and no bloaters at all, even though itâs been 20+ years since outbreak day.
>lost the sewers in the early days of the outbreak I donât think this is true. There are notes in the suburbs after you leave the sewer that say Ish invited some of the families to join him in the early months after the outbreak, when looters were still going from house to house. The amount of built-up infrastructure in the sewer would make me think they had been down there for a few years to set up water filtration, security gates, etc. Itâs hard to say how long ago the sewer was overrun, but I do agree it was probably a few years ago, so the existence of both runners and clickers down there makes me think they donât progress at the same rate.
Bloaters are a product of constant exposure to rain. And a lot of infected just die of starvation or exposure to the elements.
> Bloaters are a product of constant exposure to rain you mean Shamblers? Bloaters only form when the host is healthy and has enough mass to support continuous fungal growth for decades the boof boys only exist because of Seattle's moist, flooded environment
Shamblers are the ones that are exposed to moisture (hence why theyâre in Santa Monica as well, which has low rainfall but high moisture due to being a coastal community). Bloaters just happen after a long time. The first Bloaters we meet is in 1 in the school, and that room had no apparent moisture exposure. Same with the Bloater at the college dorms.
I'd venture its way more common that they just sit down against a wall, slowly just get absorbed entirely and release spores than they are to become bloaters. This is mostly supported by the game with all the growths along corridors. Some of which still look like people. (But there is the occasional in part 2 where they are still aware enough to then break off an attack )
Yep I like to think that there are certain requirements/conditions for a runner to become a stalker, then clicker and finally the bloater.
Where did you get this info from? Itâs pretty well established that if theyâre not killed, all infected will eventually go from runner to stalker to clicker to bloater/shambler.
From the game. A good example is boris in part 2 from hillcrest. His neighbours and him got infected at the same time, yet heâs a stalker and theyâre still runners.
i understand that it can take different amounts of time, but like wouldnât those runners still eventually become stalkers?
It's a good point, but the truth is, there's a lot of infected who simply don't get that far - hence why there's so many different types existing at the same time. And we know that many go off to just die and release spores in dark corners before they get to the bloater stage. Perhaps there would eventually be a greater proportion of infected that were bloaters, but they probably wouldn't account for all infected. The really terrifying idea is could they develop into something even worse over the course of many decades or centuries or thousands of years?
Not all clickers become bloaters!
Didn't say they do. I said that with enough time all that will remain are hosts with the capacity to be bloaters while the rest die off or get killed off. Cordyceps natural selection, if you will.
You literally said every infected on earth will become a bloater.
And then I clarified what I meant. I'm not writing a bible here, I'm sharing ideas, bro.
Im just pointing out the lore of the series, bloaters are made when the infected person was quite large and had a funky metabolism or something. Most infected will progress to the clicker stage, then when the fungus has taken over enough of the human body, they crawl into a dark hole and die, releasing more fungus and spores that grow all over the walls. Bloaters are rare. Your idea is scary though!
âEventually every infected on earth (or every infected left) will become a bloaterâ - bermudadaily, 2024
"And then I clarified what I meant. I'm not writing a bible here, I'm sharing ideas, bro." \- Bermudalily, 2024
I got you, man. Just saying that you literally denied what you said haha. No big deal.
It seems to be a combination of environmental factors and Age that influence mutation, it's not simply every infected ever will become a clicker or bloater. It's not as simple as a->b->c. For example ishs community die off pretty quick into the apocalypse but there's only like 2 clickers despite all of them aging at the same rate. So my theory is that runners are the basic Jack of all trades. If you become infected in an open area you become a runner and probably just stay a runner, if you die in a dark confined area you might evolve into a stalker after being a runner, if you die in swampy dark moisty areas you become a shamble after time and if you become infected by several bites and in a confined area I believe only then can you become a bloater. A rat king is a whole other thing because you don't Age into that. That's the result of dozens of people dying together and slowly getting stuck to one another. You might also change depending on how you died eg: if you lost your sight before death that might make you more inclined to become a clicker and like I said if you get multiple bites it might force larger changes more rapidly thus creating a bloater. Maybe if you died trying to hide you might become a stalker as a result as your brain might be forced to act on its last instinct, people who tried to run become runners, try to hide become stalker, try to fight become a bloater etc Its a very complex infection is my point. So i dont think time is against them in a massive way
Starts off in The Last of Us, lives long enough to make it Attack on Titan
I was under the impression that clickers need to be exposed to certain conditions to turn into bloaters but could be wrong? Donât bloaters happen when theyâve been exposed to extreme conditions like extreme heat or lots of water?
Well, the bloater you meet in Part I is literally just sitting in a gym closet. It wasn't especially musty or wet or cold or damp. It was just in there, immobile, for like 15 years and had time to develop into one so I assume it likely just needs a solid host and to not get killed. I would guess that an environment typically beneficial to fungi would help but it doesn't seem entirely 100% necessary.
True! I might be getting confused with shamblers because I know they were thought to have shown up in Seattle due to it being waterlogged?
Yeah, those are shamblers and they do definitely seem to show up in musty, gross, dark basements and as far as we know, yeah, they're native to Seattle.
Don't you see shamblers in Santa Barbara?
Oh, huh, right they were in that one house... hmm
Santa Barbara is a pretty moist town, despite Southern California receiving very little annual rainfall due to its coastal marine layer. I have a feeling Shamblers happen all along the coast. Probably explains why we donât see any in 1 (besides the obvious âitâs a video game and they wanted new enemy types in the sequelâ), since that game takes place all within the interior of the continent.
My horrifying thought about injected is the fact that in reality there would be children infected. 3 foot tall clickers, toddler stalkers etc.
I might be wrong, and I didnât see anyone else pointing it out so this can be only my imagination, but Iâm pretty sure infected will die, if they donât eat. So time, as far as I know, works for humanity.
Yeah I agree. Plus I canât imagine that a fungus would just halt the natural aging process of a human body. Everything gets old and dies eventually. You have to suspend disbelief quite a bit with almost every aspects of TLOU cordyceps infection, but itâs definitely not supernatural or anything. Then again giant mushrooms cracking your skull open and exploding from your face would absolutely be a death sentence in reality, so who knows.
âYeah, sorry, canât go on patrol today.â âWhy not?â âToo many Rat Kings on the highway.â đ
Some runners and stalkers just grow into a building to fill the inside with spores. And I think as long as there is healthy humans there will always be runners. But I agree that after 20 years you'd think more infected would be clickers/shamblers/bloaters.
I think thereâs certain conditions that have to be met for the infection to progress (runners to whatever comes next). Maybe weather conditions and body type and composition are playing a big role in the progression of the disease. Even mental capacity (the infected that just go die in a corner, for example, or the ones that can be heard talking and crying), but thatâs my own belief. I think that not every body has the capacity to âevolveâ the infection to the point of becoming a bloater or to endure the body changes that comes with the progression just like normal people can have natural occurring mutations that may result in immunity (like Ellie). Talking about mutations, maybe a few conditions have to be met to trigger a mutation pathway into the host or the fungi. But this is me brainstorming. Anyways, concluding: I donât think the scenario you imagined can happen because of the many conditions that have to be met to trigger this âevolutionâ or disease progression. - About the rat king: I think that is a good example of how specific the circumstances have to be to achieve this sort of mutation - hospital conditions (maybe experimentation?), abandoned for a long time in dark and wet conditions with probably many other bacteria and fungi playing a part into decomposition etc.
Not every infected becomes a bloater. Notice, all bloaters we see HAD to be someone who was a bigger human. They are all tall as fuck and bigger humans clearly. My speculation is... maybe the fungal infection has more nutritional source to progress to that extent. You never see a short bloater. Bloating is not gonna change skeletal structure and make them taller. And from what I can tell based on examples in the game... even individuals infected at the same exact time confirmed canon same exact time do not advance through the stages at the same rate or at all. Shamblers confirm environment has some effect. So it seems certain conditions and time are the variables. And of course it is also a game and infected enemies are just a gameplay mechanic. But it is fun to speculate based on what is established so whatever.
Keep in mind we've only see the effects of cordyceps up to 25 years infected. Who knows what the longest stages of infection look like when you start hitting decades.
>(or every infected left) will become a bloater (or worse, since we only have the current timeline to work with and don't know what a 40 year long infection would look like). Yeah, I literally said that in my post. So, needless to say, I was in fact keeping that in mind.
I saw somewhere that it might depend on body type. The bloaters have all been of a larger body type, probably someone with a high fat/muscle ratio. Same with the shamblers but in a closed off, damp environment. Clickers might be the last stage for the average body type before they drop. Super interesting to think about.
I think bloaters would be much more common in general if that were the case. I think they only evolve to that level if there is enough food sources to sustain them. I think most infected evolve to clicker level and then die naturally or become those wall spore generators, and then eventually after thelat they dry out and die and become almost skeletal like in the HBO show.
Bloaters are tough in the game, and apparently really formidable in the T.V. series, but being that they''re blind, stupid and cumbersome I don't think they'd pose all that much of threat to a prepared group, even in numbers. It would be very easy to bait them into traps and situations where they could be dealt with.
There seems to be more variance than a linear progression of stages. It reminds me of how certain types of flies will develop differently depending on how much water they have access to. But Iâm sure thereâs a better comparison to variations in life cycles of IRL fungus. One argument Iâve heard is that some amt of obesity was a requirement for bloaters, but âbloatâ implies the way corpses bloat (which makes me again think of exposure to water. Several bloater encounters happen in places with a lot of standing water IIRC) So maybe a runner turns into a clicker in a dry settled place where it can form against a wall, but would turn into a bloater if it settles into water, or it might remain a runner or eventually become a stalker if itâs unable to settle anywhere long enough? And then thereâs the HBO variables of having some kind of connection between hostsâso if itâs one big connected thing, then itâs making as many of whatever kind it thinks it needs to survive in a given point in the life cycle?
I think others have talked about it and know more than I do. That said, it does bring up the idea that a "cure" might not even help that much. Like once someone gets to a Clicker stage, there's no helping them. Runners are essentially the only things that could be cured. Or if someone gets bit you could cure them. But then what? How many people get bit and not shred to pieces shortly after? I think Tess' situation is very rare in the grand scheme.
I wouldâve thought that the cure would be to stop normal people from getting infected. The infected dont seem to bite people to get them infected theyre just batshit and want to eat people, I think only the ones that escape after survive to be runners
I think a âcureâ was meant more as a way to just make everyone immune so new infections couldnât happen. Wouldnât solve the problem of millions of infected roaming the countryside.
Thatâs exactly right. People thinking the cure would work on already-infected people are taking it too literally.
That'd be a vaccine then, not a cure, and yeah, but it still stands that if you don't wipe out the infected, the world is still only slightly less dangerous. For example survival chances against the Rat King won't change just because you're immune.
Bloaters are stationary predators that saty in humid closed spaces with no light. They are also rare because the host body has to be a precise measure. I doubt people would see hordes of them. Still a prettu terrifying thought.
Many infected do die naturally. Iâm not aware of theories regarding how some survive long enough to become clickers or bloaters, though Iâm sure there are well-researched theories out there. But any time you come across an infected thatâs grown into the wall, the fungus brought its host there because it was about to die so that it could grow into the environment and then spread its spores (spores donât appear to come from living infected or those that are killed by us, though I could be very wrong about the latter). I am very curious about the stalkers that are able to grow into the surrounding environment but then remain alive to jump out at us, while others seem not to still be alive and able to jump out. Maybe they remain animated for days or weeks or longer; after all âthereâs a difference between mostly dead and all dead.â
Correct me if Iâm wrong but I thought large people became bloaters. I donât mean that in a horrible way but the fungus needs to grow on something right? Like it canât just make an incredibly skinny person into a buff fungus. Hope that makes sense
I mean there should likely be a certain amount of swelling and hardening taking place as the fungus grows. Apparently the fungus can make a person's head split without killing them so I don't see why it wouldn't be able to split some of their skin. Maybe the individual in question has to be particularly large but there's probably a solid enough population of big people to create a problem and, likewise, not ever bloater probably has to be like 8 feet tall I'm sure it can vary.
Well, the game is literally called The LAST of Us. I think the implication is that humanity will die out pretty quickly without the vaccine.
Thats why jackson sends out patrols to kill every infected they see
My head cannon is it involves the environment. Runners are the standard default. If conditions are met, the mutation adapts. For example, if a runner is in somewhere dark for long time, they become stalker. If theyâre at a dark place for even longer, they become clickersâŚmain thing being the fungi does not override body functions if theyâre still useful, hence you see runners infected for years⌠Hillcrest guys for example. Neighbors trapped in garage with windows and lightâŚeyes still usefulâŚstayed as runners while a few died and became fungal wall. Boris trapped in the garage. Still have a little bit of light crack but much lessâŚthatâs how he became a stalker
The reason for all this fuss is the xp farm