Intense Film Shows How Vines Can Wrap Entire New York... And The World. Is It Possible?

It might be hard to fully imagine a planet fully engulfed by greens, but this intense short film shows how scary vines can wrap and consume the entire New York... and then the world.

Good thing, it is just a film... yet.

This multi-awarded film is a graduation project from Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany. It was done at the Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction.

Lasting for less than four minutes, the film shows the "clash" between nature and civilization, as per its Vimeo description. In a short period of time, it was able to show how rapidly vines take over New York until it fully envelops the world.

The question is, can these creepy crawlers actually do that.

Wrapped from Crave on Vimeo.

Let's talk about vines for a bit.

Vines are natural social climbers, as Canyon News puts it. These crawling plants are incredibly aggressive, taking over everything along their path to get the best sunshine, even the tallest of trees. They spread their roots far and wide and if there is no more soil to cover, they grow into a shrubby plant that produces seeds which they will later on spew to get more of their kind. And the cycle goes on.

Some people choose to have vines in their gardens. Some vines produce beautiful flowers and can be used as a nice groundcover. Honeysuckle, star jasmine and lilac vine, for instance, are great for gardens, as they are not exactly are destructive.

But there are also other vines that are ready to wreck everything along their path, like the infamous kudzu.

Kudzu is a perennial vine that relentlessly climbs and creeps over everything. It is an invasive species that terrorizes native plants all over southeastern U.S., as per Nature Conservancy.

Originating from Japan and China, it was introduced to the U.S. in 1876 and was largely promoted in the 1930s to '50s for soil erosion control... not knowing that it began to overtake everything and anything on its path.

Called "the vine that ate the South," kudzu grows at a rate of one foot per day, earning its "mile-a-minute" nickname.

Now people are trying to stop this vine either by herbicide and/or continuous mowing and grazing by cows and goats.

But again, can these vines actually take over the world, as the film suggests?

As per this thinkpiece from National Geographic, it might take a long, long time. But there might be some lessons here about the vines' perseverance to get through anything. Hopefully, in a less destructive way.