“Fear is the mind-killer” is one of the most memorable quotes from Frank Herbert’s Dune. It’s the mantra Paul Atreides repeats to himself to survive the Gom Jabbar test. The Bene Gesserit’s “Litany Against Fear” is also one of the franchise’s most enduring ideas. It’s about the victory of mind over matter, of mind over our basest, most animalistic instincts. Not giving in to fear is one of the hallmarks of being human. It’s a concept you don’t need spice to comprehend, appreciate or master. But on Dune: Prophecy fear became a literal mind-killer, as the show turned a central Dune philosophy and made it a virus.
Dune: Prophecy‘s season one finale revealed how Desmond Hart got his “great power” after surviving a sandworm attack on Arrakis. An unknown figure (maybe human, maybe machine) used forbidden thinking machines to implant nanotech on Desmond’s eye. That is what allows the soldier, somehow, to burn people from the inside out. Hart activates a deadly bioengineered virus others have unknowingly contracted. Hart also appears to be patient zero, the person spreading the virus when he gets in close contact with them.
While we don’t know who made the bio-weapon, why they specifically chose Desmond Hart as their unwitting weapon, or how exactly he’s activating the fatal disease, we know how it works. We also know what it’s based on. Mother Raquella, through Lila, identified the lesions found on Kashaka’s brain. They were caused by a variation of the Omnius Scourge, a highly fatal pathogen thinking machines used against humanity during the Butlerian Jihad centuries earlier. That retrovirus “incubated in the human body, releasing an enzyme that infected the liver.”
This new “enzyme has similar properties,” but rather than hiding in the liver it concentrates itself in a person’s amygdala, “the fear center” of the brain. Once activated the pathogen causes terrible visions in the mind of its human host. That sets off a chain reaction. The more they fight back, the stronger the virus gets. Ultimately the victim’s body burns from the inside out trying to survive.
Nazir, a Sister also trained as a Suk doctor, thought she could organically produce an anti-viral. She was best equipped to use prana-bindu to transmute the virus inside her body on a molecular level. (A process seen in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part II when Lady Jessica transmuted the Water of Life.) But not even Nazir could overcome the virus. It kept getting stronger each time she fought against it and killed her.
Tula at least learned from Nazir’s death. She learned they can’t fight this virus, they can only survive it. And with her sister’s guidance Valya did just that when Desmond Hart activated the enzyme in the Reverend Mother Superior. Instead of letting her fear overcome her, and instead of trying to defeat it, Valya Harkonnen let go. She let go of her fears about who she is, what she’d done, and the things she thought she was responsible for. She let her fear wash over her and in doing so lived.
Ten thousand years after Dune: Prophecy Paul Atreides’ Bene Gesserit mother will teach him about the Litany of Fear. She will teach him he “must not fear.” The future Muad’Dib will know “fear is the mind-killer,” the “little-death that brings total obliteration.” But long ago that was not just an idea, it was a literal way to survive a virus that threatened all of humanity. Fear was truly a mind-killer.
Editor’s Note: Dune: Prophecy is a Legendary Entertainment production. Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who isn’t afraid of the fear virus. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermikeOpens in a new tab. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
