The Last of Us is set in a dystopian apocalypse in which a brain controlling fungus has dominated the world. Such a world is reminiscent of the political idea of the State of Nature. However, the Last of Us is more overtly Hobbesian than that. The show's portrayal of political change, safety, state legitimacy and political violence elaborate the pessimistic politics of the eponymous 17th C philosopher, writes Matthew Festenstein. Warning: this article contains spoilers for the first season of The Last of Us.

The timber has been cut, the oil has run out, and the plantation soil no longer supports crops, in the devastated landscapes explored by the anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World. In this global state of capitalist precarity, “we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin.” The vision of the fungal terminus in The Last of Us (LoU) is more terrifying but equally final. For viewers of the show, following the game, it provides a twenty-first century dystopia of societal collapse and the destruction of the modern state, reflecting deep-seated anxieties about pandemics, climate change, and authoritarianism. I want to suggest, though, that its politics are rooted in the seventeenth-century moment when the idea of the modern state first crystallises. In particular, LoU’s dystopia emulates the vision of a state of nature developed by the most powerful early modern writer on the state, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and follows Hobbes in his suspicion of collective political action.