No, seriously. According to NPR, millions of flies around Washington have been “attacked by a mind-controlling fungus” over the last few months, turning them into little more than doomed spreaders of a deadly curse.

“It basically zombie-izes them. In other words, it manipulates their behavior,” Raupp says. “[The fly] moves to a high point, let’s say the tip of a blade of grass.”

The fly freezes at the tip of the leaf, and the fungus spews more mind-controlling spores into the wind.

Mind-controlling parasites are all around us. The number of creatures that can be affected is “huge,” says Janice Moore, a professor at Colorado State University who wrote a book on parasites and animal behavior. She says some parasites play with neurotransmitters; others with hormones.

“If you take the world of parasites broadly, we don’t know the half of it yet,” she says.

Oh, goodie. If the work of Danny Boyle is any indication, we should probably just go right ahead and start preparing for the eventual and near-total elimination of the human race, shouldn’t we?