When fans of FX’s vampires-as-parasitic-infection show The Strain finished watching season one, they had some questions about this alternate-reality version of New York City. Things like, “How long can those parasites survive outside of a host body?”, and “Are you fucking kidding me with this going back to his house just for a picture?! It’s the apocalypse!” One of those questions will now be answered, though, sadly, not the one we would prefer. Variety reports that UC Irvine will be offering an online college course covering themes from the show, established in a partnership with the network, the school, and educational technology company Instructure.
“Fight Or Die: The Science Behind FX’s The Strain” will be a free course covering concepts and themes addressed in the show. This includes “practical and theoretical understanding of parasites, cyber-attacks, and disease dynamics,” but tellingly does not appear to include “Non-crappy fight choreography 101.” However, the class is a massive open online course, or MOOC, meaning anyone can take the class, whether you’re a student at the school or not. So there’s nothing stopping you from signing up and getting all the information you’ll need to stage your own supernaturally derived biological assault on the U.S. population.
This is actually the second course of this kind developed and offered by the university. Last year, the school offered a similar program based on AMC’s The Walking Dead. But whereas everyone knows the zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened yet, by dint of us all still being here, not everyone is convinced that a shadowy cabal of evil vampire-worshippers don’t already run the government. Please send proof of the conspiracy we already know is present at the highest levels of society to [email protected].