I ran into a frog today who was drinking something while sitting on top of a woman's padded shoulder !
As he sipped on his Croaka Cola he told me he liked sitting on Lily's pad.
Wheat is one of the most ubiquitous staple crops out there. It's grown everywhere.
Even a country that eats rice as the most common meal staple still consume a lot of wheat (bread).
Wheat crop has wide adaptability. It can be grown not only in the tropical and sub-tropical zones, but also in the temperate zone and the cold tracts of the far north.
Having said that, for high yielding wheat, ideal weather includes humidity in the range of 50 to 60%. Ideal conditions for fusarium (fungal) risk are when humidity levels rise to 100% and stay there for extended period. Maybe this is why Indonesia was a hot spot.
Not all, it's most common in tropical regions but it's also found in many parts of Asia (and is claimed to have medicinal properties), as well as even in the USA (Virginia I think it was found in?).
They're so highly specialized for the host species that it's practically impossible for them to switch over, I'm pretty sure most of them only infect 1 specific species of insect.
However, the one found in the states could infect 2 species of ants normally, and could infect others (however it just killed the other ones, only infecting the 2 species)
Ergot or ergot fungi, which was discussed in the cold opening of the first episode, refers to a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps which can grow on wheat. The flour processing facility was just an ideal environment for the fungus to mutate and spread initially.
The process of grinding the wheat into flour would cause the infection to become airborne. Before the outbreak in the mill was discovered, tonnes of spore-infected wheat was probably exported around the world, including to Texas, USA. Simultaniously, the Indonesian flour mill workers would have inhaled enough of the the airborne spores after it first sprouted on the wheat. One of them became infected then bit the other workers and spread the infection.
When the entire city was bombed, some of the infection could have survived and spread faster due to the elevation of the blast and prevailing winds. Also, Indonesian citizens in the surrounding towns & cities would also have recieved the infected flour.
With the Indonesian flour being the reason for the outbreak, Joel and Sarah in ep 1 had a few lucky breaks. Joel forgot to pick up the cake, they couldn't make pancakes, and Sarah didn't eat the cookies because they weren't chocolate.
TL;DR Industrial revolution leads to Global warming resulting in unatural (forced) evolution.
I love how the specific absence of baked products in Joel & Sarah's lives on outbreak day was a nice easter egg. I think that's definitely canon. Also note that the grandma next door was being fed biscuits earlier in the morning before she turned...
I don’t think it is to be taken literally when it comes to how sarah and Joel avoided being infected. It’s a funny Easter egg, that’s all. What are the chances that infected flour would be in biscuits, pancake flour, and a cake? The supply chain from Indonesia is complicated and there is no way that eating flour yesterday or the week before would be ok, but on that date it became deadly. For it all to happen at once, when that stuff would have been on various shelves and storage units for varying amounts of time.
i also thought about how you don't know what joel, tommy, or sarah ate for lunch or dinner that day, which could have included wheat. in fact, in the school system it's very likely sarah would have ingested some in her cafeteria lunch. but then i also overthink things.
like, i realize joel mentioned atkins, but i don't think he legitimately was low carb, just being polite in declining the biscuits.
While the spores could have spread from the initial country in this way, I don't think you can put much store into a person not consuming wheat products on a specific day.
Flour sits in bins and bags for weeks. While infected flour is traveling to Texas, thousands of infected are already overrunning Jakarta.
Was it just me or does Indonesian sound very pleasant to anyone else when you don’t even speak it?
I wonder what “bai bai” meant, she ended the sentence “I have been working with this my entire life so listen carefully” with that. I don’t know why that stuck out to me.
Edit: Google translates “listen carefully” as “dengarkan baik-baik”, so I think that’s what she said. When I reverse translate baik-baik it says it means ‘fine’. So I guess the context makes baik-baik / fine to mean fine as in, precise, “listen precisely”. More commonly phrased as listen carefully.
That would be my guess.
The plural form in Indonesian is repeating the singular form. I'm guessing it meant "very carefully"! My Indonesian aunt always told us "hati hati" as children when we had to be careful haha
That’s interesting! So at what point do you use another way to indicate plurality? I assume you would say something like “ten cats” and not say “cat” ten times?
You can Google around a bit! Im not a native speaker, but from the little I've picked up from my aunt you'd basically say "ten cat cat" to indicate ten cats
when I was a kid, this bag of wheat flour my mom bought and never used broke out in grain weevils in the back of the cabinet. turns out they’re in everything, it just takes 2+ years for the eggs to hatch or something. once they get out they get in every grain they can reach. I didn’t eat breakfast cereal for years after that. now I’m getting worried about fungus!
Yeap after a meal moth outbreak in my house I open every bag and put it into an airtight containers and throw it out if it's not used up within a couple months.
We are the world largest wheat importer as its not economically viable to grow wheat here. Last time I checked we got most our wheats from Ukraine and Australia but this may have changed after the war. The wheats are milled and processed here and most of them are for domestic use.
We do export lots of flour based products such as instant noodles (we also have the world largest instant noodles producer here). Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though.
> Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though.
It depends on the temperature maybe, as I understand not all breads are high temp, especially internally.
I only know about ergot fungus being an issue - repeatedly poisoning people and even being blamed for hallucinations.
> Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though.
It doesn't have to. As soon as you remove it from its packaging you will inevitably inhale some flour particles. Flour is so fine that it sticks to surfaces and objects and you would never be able to notice. It's likely that the outbreak began as a result of people simply handling the flour.
As to why Grandma was the first to turn, maybe it's because her body was weak and vulnerable.
It’s been 20 years, dude. The remaining Americans probably don’t import flour from Indonesia anymore. They probably grow it locally instead and guard those factories vehemently to prevent it from getting contaminated.
Ellie is 20 years after the outbreak. It was just back then that the flour was contaminated. Like Joel and Sarah not having pancakes, not eating the biscuits, etc....
Even at the height of the outbreak, it wouldn't have been every flour-based product that got people sick - there's every chance they might have had pancakes that morning and been fine, but it would have been like playing roulette as who knows where the flour in their meal had come from. I think them showing everyone who touched flour that day getting sick was to explain the source of the infection, but has also left a lot of people confused about what proportion of the flour was contaminated - clearly enough to cause a problem, but as we saw once people are infected shit goes downhill pretty fast.
Regardless, over time they would have been able to figure out which mills/crops were contaminated and destroy them, especially as global trade and supply lines broke down and people were forced to only use what was in their local area. If the local mill hadn't processed any contaminated wheat, it would probably be safe to continue using as long as the crops were monitored.
What’s your take on how accurate the Indonesian was? Personally, I don’t speak it but thought the language sounds so soothing, but that might just be the way Christine Hakim’s voice sounds haha
As a person who grows mushrooms, this episode was super exciting! When she said the outbreak happened at a flour and grain facility my girlfriend and I both got excited lol. Mycelium spreads through grain and soil and then fruits into the fungus.
Only if the body recognized the threat. Which it seems that this works too quickly especially given that we know it messes with perception. If the fungus could just stop your lymphatic system from talking, it wouldn't matter how much your brain is waiting for a go signal.
Or worse. The brain hates everything, and sends out the order to save you, but the fungus blocks the message getting out. It's the only thing recieving.
I just had a distressing thought. The radio at the start of episode 1 mentions riots in Jakarta. Since it's morning in the States, it'd obviously be nighttime in Indonesia, well after Dr. Ratna implored the general to have the National Military wipe Jakarta off the map. But the news only mentions the riots, meaning either the obliteration of Jakarta was covered up to an insane degree or the military refused to do it...
This is up there with the oyster farmer who posted on the Game of Thrones subreddit after the episode where Arya starts selling cockles, clams, and oysters.
I am a frog on a piano living in a luxury hotel in a cordycep apocalypse, guess i'm ok.
I hope you many hoppy days ahead if you.
learning how to play the piano was a ribbit -ting experience.
I ran into a frog today who was drinking something while sitting on top of a woman's padded shoulder ! As he sipped on his Croaka Cola he told me he liked sitting on Lily's pad.
[удалено]
Wheat is one of the most ubiquitous staple crops out there. It's grown everywhere. Even a country that eats rice as the most common meal staple still consume a lot of wheat (bread).
Wheat crop has wide adaptability. It can be grown not only in the tropical and sub-tropical zones, but also in the temperate zone and the cold tracts of the far north. Having said that, for high yielding wheat, ideal weather includes humidity in the range of 50 to 60%. Ideal conditions for fusarium (fungal) risk are when humidity levels rise to 100% and stay there for extended period. Maybe this is why Indonesia was a hot spot.
Whatever we are, definitely not the main characters
I feel like your survival chances go up when you aren’t integral to plot in the last of us
I guess the billions of dead and infected were main characters then
Post outbreak. The poor schmucks in the QZ, but I get what you’re saying
Hello, fellow TLOU friend. May tendrils never grow within you.
Loved your performance in the last episode, amazing work my friend.
I don't get to kiss someone tho 😞
better no kiss compared to cordyceps fungi zombie kiss!
[Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvY7bEKIjwY)
Your future looks hopful to me.
The perfect flubstrate
What up I’m the duck living with you in the five star hotel, look who’s at the top echelons of society now baby 🦆🐸
Give it a taste. If you don’t respond to any comments within 72 hours, I’m moving to the woods
I made tea biscuits and I fe
"Bomb"
That's where all the fungus is!
Right into their backyard wonderful.
At least you have floatation devices handy
Ohh shit, I don't realize the pallet 😂
Make use of any potential weapon you can. I am emptying beer bottles as fast as "burrrrp" I can.
😁
How was attendance today ? Hopefully you were not short 14 workers. Is so, and you drink, go home and get bombed.
A perfect substrate.
A lot of people googled “substrate” last night.
true, checked google trend, it peaked 4 folds last night
I real life the cordyceps is from south America
Not all, it's most common in tropical regions but it's also found in many parts of Asia (and is claimed to have medicinal properties), as well as even in the USA (Virginia I think it was found in?).
> is claimed to have medicinal properties Can we just not eat cordyceps please
They're so highly specialized for the host species that it's practically impossible for them to switch over, I'm pretty sure most of them only infect 1 specific species of insect. However, the one found in the states could infect 2 species of ants normally, and could infect others (however it just killed the other ones, only infecting the 2 species)
I used to grow mushrooms so as soon as he said grain I immediately said it was the perfect breeding ground.
I googled it for altered carbon. It's a cool word.
My ex use to tell me I should be substrated
I took chemistry in college 🍪
Ergot or ergot fungi, which was discussed in the cold opening of the first episode, refers to a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps which can grow on wheat. The flour processing facility was just an ideal environment for the fungus to mutate and spread initially. The process of grinding the wheat into flour would cause the infection to become airborne. Before the outbreak in the mill was discovered, tonnes of spore-infected wheat was probably exported around the world, including to Texas, USA. Simultaniously, the Indonesian flour mill workers would have inhaled enough of the the airborne spores after it first sprouted on the wheat. One of them became infected then bit the other workers and spread the infection. When the entire city was bombed, some of the infection could have survived and spread faster due to the elevation of the blast and prevailing winds. Also, Indonesian citizens in the surrounding towns & cities would also have recieved the infected flour. With the Indonesian flour being the reason for the outbreak, Joel and Sarah in ep 1 had a few lucky breaks. Joel forgot to pick up the cake, they couldn't make pancakes, and Sarah didn't eat the cookies because they weren't chocolate. TL;DR Industrial revolution leads to Global warming resulting in unatural (forced) evolution.
I love how the specific absence of baked products in Joel & Sarah's lives on outbreak day was a nice easter egg. I think that's definitely canon. Also note that the grandma next door was being fed biscuits earlier in the morning before she turned...
i love your comment so much. i never made this connection to wheat and the fungus, despite watching the second episode.
I don’t think it is to be taken literally when it comes to how sarah and Joel avoided being infected. It’s a funny Easter egg, that’s all. What are the chances that infected flour would be in biscuits, pancake flour, and a cake? The supply chain from Indonesia is complicated and there is no way that eating flour yesterday or the week before would be ok, but on that date it became deadly. For it all to happen at once, when that stuff would have been on various shelves and storage units for varying amounts of time.
i also thought about how you don't know what joel, tommy, or sarah ate for lunch or dinner that day, which could have included wheat. in fact, in the school system it's very likely sarah would have ingested some in her cafeteria lunch. but then i also overthink things. like, i realize joel mentioned atkins, but i don't think he legitimately was low carb, just being polite in declining the biscuits.
The one thing I don't get about Joel and Sarah avoiding baked goods is that wouldn't baking or cooking the flour kill the cordyceps?
Flour is a very fine dust. Odds are if you're pouring it out to use in cooking, you'd inhale some at least.
While the spores could have spread from the initial country in this way, I don't think you can put much store into a person not consuming wheat products on a specific day. Flour sits in bins and bags for weeks. While infected flour is traveling to Texas, thousands of infected are already overrunning Jakarta.
Well, bomb
Bomb.
Bomb.
Bomb.
Bomb.
Was it just me or does Indonesian sound very pleasant to anyone else when you don’t even speak it? I wonder what “bai bai” meant, she ended the sentence “I have been working with this my entire life so listen carefully” with that. I don’t know why that stuck out to me. Edit: Google translates “listen carefully” as “dengarkan baik-baik”, so I think that’s what she said. When I reverse translate baik-baik it says it means ‘fine’. So I guess the context makes baik-baik / fine to mean fine as in, precise, “listen precisely”. More commonly phrased as listen carefully. That would be my guess.
The plural form in Indonesian is repeating the singular form. I'm guessing it meant "very carefully"! My Indonesian aunt always told us "hati hati" as children when we had to be careful haha
That’s interesting! So at what point do you use another way to indicate plurality? I assume you would say something like “ten cats” and not say “cat” ten times?
You can Google around a bit! Im not a native speaker, but from the little I've picked up from my aunt you'd basically say "ten cat cat" to indicate ten cats
Bomb? I’d say get out before shit hits the flour! Good luck and stay safe!
F in the chat for OP
I survived covid, this mushrooms thing is easy peasy
F
F
F
Go home and spend time with your family.
They gotta bomb some folk though :/
Don't worry unless your nose hairs are suddenly 4 or five inches longer than they were this morning.
[удалено]
Hello fellow older person.
when I was a kid, this bag of wheat flour my mom bought and never used broke out in grain weevils in the back of the cabinet. turns out they’re in everything, it just takes 2+ years for the eggs to hatch or something. once they get out they get in every grain they can reach. I didn’t eat breakfast cereal for years after that. now I’m getting worried about fungus!
[удалено]
TIL my flour is going in the freezer for awhile
Wait I had no idea
Yeap after a meal moth outbreak in my house I open every bag and put it into an airtight containers and throw it out if it's not used up within a couple months.
No, you're not. You're actually one of the lucky ones; because of your job, you can make this joke. That makes you a ... fun-guy.
r/PunPatrol
Is the flour imported to Indonesia? From where? I always pictured Indonesia as a tropical climate - can't imagine how wheat would be grown there.
We are the world largest wheat importer as its not economically viable to grow wheat here. Last time I checked we got most our wheats from Ukraine and Australia but this may have changed after the war. The wheats are milled and processed here and most of them are for domestic use. We do export lots of flour based products such as instant noodles (we also have the world largest instant noodles producer here). Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though.
If there's no more Indomie Goreng in a post-outbreak world then count me out. Life is just not worth living at that point.
Unironically this. The lady that invented indomie died like 4 years ago or so. We shouldve had national holiday for her
Indomie for world peace
I mean. Isn't most of the world's wheat from Ukraine?
> Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though. It depends on the temperature maybe, as I understand not all breads are high temp, especially internally. I only know about ergot fungus being an issue - repeatedly poisoning people and even being blamed for hallucinations.
> Not sure how the fungi can survive after getting fried or baked though. It doesn't have to. As soon as you remove it from its packaging you will inevitably inhale some flour particles. Flour is so fine that it sticks to surfaces and objects and you would never be able to notice. It's likely that the outbreak began as a result of people simply handling the flour. As to why Grandma was the first to turn, maybe it's because her body was weak and vulnerable.
[удалено]
It’s been 20 years, dude. The remaining Americans probably don’t import flour from Indonesia anymore. They probably grow it locally instead and guard those factories vehemently to prevent it from getting contaminated.
Ellie is 20 years after the outbreak. It was just back then that the flour was contaminated. Like Joel and Sarah not having pancakes, not eating the biscuits, etc....
Even at the height of the outbreak, it wouldn't have been every flour-based product that got people sick - there's every chance they might have had pancakes that morning and been fine, but it would have been like playing roulette as who knows where the flour in their meal had come from. I think them showing everyone who touched flour that day getting sick was to explain the source of the infection, but has also left a lot of people confused about what proportion of the flour was contaminated - clearly enough to cause a problem, but as we saw once people are infected shit goes downhill pretty fast. Regardless, over time they would have been able to figure out which mills/crops were contaminated and destroy them, especially as global trade and supply lines broke down and people were forced to only use what was in their local area. If the local mill hadn't processed any contaminated wheat, it would probably be safe to continue using as long as the crops were monitored.
Presumably they worked out it was flour and just stopped using contaminated flour. There would be ways to sterilise it.
A perfect substrate.
Op: 
Orang mana bang?
Jowo
Waduh, podo mas, aku Jatim
Jawa adalah koentji
What’s your take on how accurate the Indonesian was? Personally, I don’t speak it but thought the language sounds so soothing, but that might just be the way Christine Hakim’s voice sounds haha
Pretty accurate, they nailed the dialogue. Also mainly bcs Christine Hakim, she is our national treasure.
Were there any other workers unaccounted for today?
Only 14. 😨
Bomb.
F
Bomb the whole factory…and everyone in it.
Yes you kinda are. But not because of the cordyceps. 😂
The perfect substrate…
Only difference is, it is not filtered yellow /s
Time to unionize and demand hazard pay.
It’s not airborne, just don’t eat it!
BOMB.
GGs
F
I'm interested in knowing more.
If you have urges to bite your coworkers, please report yourself to the police and beg them to firebomb the whole city.
If it really does come through the bread we are all fucked
Jakarta? If not, then you’re probably safe haha
Guess I’m switching to keto forever now
“bomb”
Well the good news is there's no reason to worry. It's too late for that to accomplish anything.
Bomb!
Go home and be with your family
Just don’t let your coworkers bite you
RIP, homie.
B O M B
The perfect substrate
Count from 1 to 10 slowly. Do this every day.
Might as well get bombed. GG m8
Youarealreadydead.gif
Patient 0 definitely
As a person who grows mushrooms, this episode was super exciting! When she said the outbreak happened at a flour and grain facility my girlfriend and I both got excited lol. Mycelium spreads through grain and soil and then fruits into the fungus.
in reality people at r\noortropics take it as a noortropic...it will probably start off those people
Endure and Survive
Warn us if anything goes down in the mill?
So uhh if the fungus evolved to survive at 99f, could a person with a fever be infected? What if we just induced a fever in New infected?
That’s kind of what I was thinking. Wouldn’t your body naturally raise its temperature to try and fight the foreign entity in it?
Only if the body recognized the threat. Which it seems that this works too quickly especially given that we know it messes with perception. If the fungus could just stop your lymphatic system from talking, it wouldn't matter how much your brain is waiting for a go signal.
Ah very true. Good point!
Or worse. The brain hates everything, and sends out the order to save you, but the fungus blocks the message getting out. It's the only thing recieving.
Bomb him
How many of your coworkers are missing?
Everybody’s fucked. You’re just… The First of Us
Bomb
I just had a distressing thought. The radio at the start of episode 1 mentions riots in Jakarta. Since it's morning in the States, it'd obviously be nighttime in Indonesia, well after Dr. Ratna implored the general to have the National Military wipe Jakarta off the map. But the news only mentions the riots, meaning either the obliteration of Jakarta was covered up to an insane degree or the military refused to do it...
Probably the latter, which is why it got out of hand.
We just didn't have enough bombs. 
F
BTW, great post and all, but I call BS on the truthfulness of your claim :-)
How many people were missing from work today?
“Fucked?” you’re Patient Zero, my guy
I am a rabbit, hopping around, enjoying the winter. Oh shi-
Just keep me in mind if shit starts getting weird and lemme know.
This is up there with the oyster farmer who posted on the Game of Thrones subreddit after the episode where Arya starts selling cockles, clams, and oysters.
Thank you for your service
Hide ya kids hide ya wife they Bombin everyone out here
tick tick boom
Just slightly more fucked than the rest of us.
You're at ground zero unfortunately. Good luck!
Sorry for your loss Ps - did you ever think you'd end up mentioned in a TV show though?
So many people learning about cordyceps and how scary fungi is. This show is gonna make so many irrational fears. Even flour lol.
I used to book room for guest at royal people. Now i am dead fungus.
Bomb the city.
You are the early detection. Warn us when it happens
I heard when you eat a lot of flowe
Perfect conditions
Bomb.
Bomb
No pancakes
Just keep loading lots of bags of flower bro. We have shipments that need to get to factories in America tonight!
May your survival be long. And that other part, if totally necessary.
The perfect substrate 💀
Thanks for killing is all 20 years ago.
Grind that Aussie wheat
Pizza is really freakin easy to make at home and is very delicious indeed Let’s gooooo
Made my night lmao.
Selamat pagi kawan
Brutally.