[timun]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Have to say, I'm a big fan of the mushroom head zombies in the show, although I would think such a cranial infection problem would probably infiltrate the throat and lungs shortly after, effectively cutting off oxygen and letting these poor chanterelles suffocate in their own infection.

It think it's implied that not necessarily every infected person will become a 'clicker'. After all, there are many corpses in the city: people whose bodies were seemingly overwhelmed by the fungus, who crawled off to some dank corner and simply died. The fungus continues to grow on the deceased person's remains until it, too, doesn't get enough nutrients to sustain itself, dries out, and also 'dies'.

Put another way: if the fungal growth erupts from the top of the head and doesn't interfere with the airways a person could become a 'clicker', but if the fungal growth interferes with the airways (or, say, another fundamentally critical organ system like the cardiovascular system) that body will simply die and the fungus feeds off the decomposing corpse. As far as the fungus is concerned it doesn't really matter either way.

Spoiler!

Although I think this explanation makes more sense in the context of the game's airborne spores, which propagate the fungus arguably even more effectively than a roaming clicker does. From a Darwinian "what's easiest to keep the species going" perspective it doesn't behoove the fungus to spare the infected bodies; being overwhelmed by fungal growth and dying to become a growth medium for spores is probably the "ideal" or "normal" lifecycle for an infected person. A 'clicker' is an infected host that just happens to have been spared suffocating fungal growth in their cardiopulmonary system, and if not for the remaining ability to breathe and consume food would collapse like any other infected.