I was born in Wyoming and I lived there for the first few years of my life. One of my first memories ever is of a giant sea of tumble weeds coming straight at me and I can attest to the scariness of these things in large numbers. It’s like a bunch of porcupines running at you at full speed.
That ain't scary , I'll tell you what's scary , living in a place where either a gators are always nearby, 50%of your state is a swamp , and 99% of the people can become crazy in an instant
I lived in Montana for a couple years and saw them there. I remember in the video game "Sunset Riders" if you touch a tumbleweed your character is injured, but thought that was just a quirk of the game. One day I had a chance to touch one and understood - NOT a game quirk, real.
So let me get this straight: 1. Grey made a video about the Statue of Liberty in which he mentioned federal land 2. That lead him to make a video on federal land in which he mentioned reservations. 3. That lead him to visit said reservations where he encountered TEKOI 4. While exploring TEKOI he encountered a lot of tumbleweed 5. We get this video. The CGP Grey cinematic universe is truly a sight to behold.
So you’re telling me that a single tumbleweed doesn’t just spawn in when a protagonist and an antagonist lock eyes on an empty road while their hands hover near their guns...bullshit
The ground shakes as hundreds of thousands of tumbleweeds grow at high noon, causing the tumbleweeds to bounce uncontrollably, so fast that they bounce across water, all the way to Australia
Engineer a virus witch exsponturly multiply at the same level at a tumble weed this infection consumes the seeds and rewire tumble weeds to never starve themselves out. Cell multiplys eats the whole tumble weed and wind blows it around. Give them a short life span to avoid mutation and to stop them sticking around when there prey is gone.
In Ukraine we have not many of them when compared to videos from US. These are native species to our country as well but they are not in big amounts here, you can see 2-3 of them per mile when crossing uncultivated area. We call it "перекотиполе" (perekotipole) which in approximate translation would sound like "rolloverthefield". Abscense of other high grass species might been the reason why they are so numerous in US.
Do they lonely roll over in Ukraine like we see in Westerns then? It's literary the tribbles. They are controlled in their native ecosystem. Only when removed do they reproduce out of control and become a real problem.
Horror Movie Pitch: Storm that brings several tumbleweeds to a small town that doesn’t stop for months, breaking windows, knocking over cars, with the tumbleweeds growing bigger over time.
How about if they aren't just normal tumbleweeds - they are sentient tumbleweeds, with minds of their own and evil intentions. Could be legit scary if done right. ;D
tumbleweeds aren't your ordinary weeds that you can just pluck from the ground, they pluck themselves and chase you down while making babies along the way
Few years ago, during military training, tumbleweed got into the tracks of a tank, as they continued mission, that tumbleweed caught fire, which spread through the entire tank, and the whole tank burnt to a crisp. And yeah, the crew were fine, only lose was the task and all of their gear.
A Tank can Burn? do you mean there was so much tumbleweed that the heat destroid it, or that the Matrial of the Tank catched fire iteself after a while?
@@carno.5911 The tumbleweeds learned how to jury-rig flamethrowers out of the many, many mechanized farm equipment they consumed over the past centuries.
This makes me want to now see a western parody where two cowboys are having a dramatic standoff and in the background we see a tumbleweed, being chased by a man in a suit.
Or better yet, have two cowboys meet at high noon for a shootout only for both of them to be engulfed by a sudden tumbleweed avalanche. Next scene: both men crawling out of it going "ouh ouh ouh" while picking the thorns out of their clothes.
The two guys are having their standoff, only for a single tumbleweed to roll in between the two. Both drop their guns and start madly chasing the tumbleweed before it goes any further, because Jesus that shitty little pest isn't gonna meddle with my or my neighbours' fields. Wild goose chase gag ensues.
OMG I just realized that ghost towns always having Tumbleweeds in media is symbolic of more than just the emptiness and destitution of those towns. It's symbolic of WHY it's a ghost town. Crazy how just a bouncing tumbleweed can suddenly say so much. Almost like "the cat that ate the canary" sort of way but more brazen. The tumbleweed tells the tale of a growing town gone backrupt due to cruddy harvests driving away the farmers to more fertile land which removes something from the local economy causing some others to leave etc etc. That just added so much detail to that rogue plant turned trope. If that even makes sense. I'm rambling..thanks for the wonderful video CGP!
Juvenile tumbleweeds are actually edible, and they taste pretty good in salads, sandwiches, pickled, etc. Learning how to spot the baby plants not only gives you an opportunity to remove them but to also try a common yet unconventional food.
Kudzu is also edible. It's still a pain in the ass. Could be worse though - could be Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) (which is not only invasive, but *toxic* - causing burns when skin exposed to the sap is exposed to light).
Oklahoman here! One night, I was driving into a storm, and just before the rain began to pour, there was this massive gust of wind followed by a ten foot tumbleweed wall momentarily engulfing the road in front of me. One of the most surreal things I've ever seen.
I got a piece of tumbleweed stuck in my air intake, suffocating the engine. We were in the middle of nowhere, Eastern Oregon, and it was a huge pain in the neck getting my sputtering car back into town. It was brand new, too!
I've lived my entire life in the urban and rural southwestern US. I've never seen a tumbleweed, and now I know why. Thanks Rocky Mountains! Fun Note: My mom says her family was too poor for a Christmas tree one year so they made one out of tumbleweeds, and she got upset at Santa for replacing it before Christmas morning. I gotta respect the ingenuity making that tree took, but that many thorns on Christmas morning around young children doesn't sound fun for anyone.
@Ben Siener Did you just make assumption that we will be advanced enough to colonize planet but not to generate CGI environment and instead just turn planet into wild west for a single movie? Wow thats really dumb.
There already are variants that are quite edible as greens (like spinach). Though most of them are high in Oxalates, which makes them poisonous in large quantities (like spinach). Farming and crossbreeding the wild ones, while pruning less desirable varieties and spreading more desirable may actually be the best method. There are countless fruits and vegetables that originally ranged from barely edible to mildly poisonouns, which are now considered delicious food staples.
Yes. Sand. As a native Dallasite have always been familiar with the occasional sandstorm. But my grandfather lived in Lamesa, he loved it there (or at least would not move); I loved him but hated visiting, sand in everything: air, water, clothes, food, everything. Sand belongs on the ground, not in my eyes and lungs.
Once passed a snow plow digging through a 12 foot tall pile of tumbleweeds that were blocking the road and that was a fascinating anecdote to share. Later when one hit my car on the freeway and jabbed a hole in my bumper I was less enthused.
I absolutely love this. You've taken an interesting topic that many people have never heard of and perfectly transformed its strange history into a masterpiece of a video. Keep the content rolling! (like tumbleweeds, I suppose).
Wait, who’s never heard of tumbleweed? It’s like, the most stereotypical atmospheric western backdrop. If you know what a cowboy is, you know what a tumbleweed is.
5:18 The way I always plant my crops in Minecraft is by setting up a grid of trenches filled with water and then planting my crops in the squares of land within them, and one time I was experimenting with flaming arrows (long before they were a thing in Vanilla Minecraft) and accidentally set one of these patches on fire, but fortunately I had those water trenches to keep the rest of my crops from catching on fire. I never realized these trenches were a real farming technique that people use to prevent a thing that happened to me in Minecraft IRL 😂😂😂
I kind of do want to tell you that if you’re not experimenting with fire, you can have a 9x9 grid being watered by a single block of water, which you can fill in with a slab so you don’t fall in it. That’s an 80:1 ratio of crop:water.
Those tumble takeovers are no joke, my home got over run one year when hundred and hundred blew in one windy day. Some were bigger than I was at the time, I was in my mid teens. Crazy stuff.
Typical Russia, first interfering with voting, now agriculture. Edit: Yes they are reversed, jokes don't necessarily have only one punchline, please stop flooding my notifications pointing that out.
@In Hoc Signo Diliget I'd rather say the US stole Russia's tumbleweed _and_ took the fame from it Since, y'know, it's native to Russia but nobody remembers that
"One study showed that a single Russian thistle can remove up to 167 liters (44 gallons) of water from the soil in competition with a wheat crop in one year." -the wikipedia Yikes
Things Grey has a problem with : - Tumbleweed - Pennies (I've never seen 1 cent coins before) - Electoral College - Untidy Spreadsheets - Old Mac books that have a bad thermal cooling system (lol) - The story of Staten Island And more to come... - Death - Airplane Seats
Me and my mom used to live in a small town in Colorado, relatively near the western Colorado desert, which in case you don’t know, is infested with tumbleweed. And a true testament to how far they can travel is the nearest tumbleweed inhabited area was about 2 miles west of us. And we still occasionally had tumbles rolling down the street. And one time one literally attacked me, it *curved* towards me and slammed into me. It hurt like hell because as you said they are mega thorny. But I walked away with zero lasting damage, watch out, tumbles are mean, and they absolutely have a mind of their own
When he says they're sticky, aka thorny, oh God, I had flashbacks of Boy Scouts and we would clean the local highway of tumbleweeds. Those mothers latch on and never let go. And yes, we would just bust out the pitchforks, chuck them into a trailer, and crush them down into bags of kindling for fire starting!
@@AVerySexuallyDeviantOrange on my notifications it sait a very sexually deviant orange said so they're essentially... so i thought someone said that a sexually deviant orange said that lol
@@AVerySexuallyDeviantOrange They're nettles who have grown up, hate the world and all living things, and want everyone to suffer. They're the Joker and the Leeroy Jenkins of the plant world. And they hate you.
Did anyone notice that the studio gradually got filled up with tumbleweed until at the end CGP Gray had to move to not be impaled I just thought that it was a nice touch
Back in Idaho a few years back, I was driving home on a windy Wednesday night with a 5 hour journey into Oregon the following morning. Tumbleweeds were blowing all over creation and a MASSIVE ONE flew right in front of me with no room for me to swerve. My truck has a decent lift on it, so I thought I'd be fine. But as soon as it went under, I lost all power steering and most of the warning lights came on. That thing took off my serpentine belt!!! Spent about an hour I didn't have getting it back on in a Burger King parking lot, the tensioner was not being friendly. But I got it on and that belt is still there today. I drove into an adjacent walmart and upon further inspection found out it had lodged itself underneath my rear axle. Fun times, and I still made it to Oregon the next morning
@@adorablecheetah2930 that's the best part! You could be on the other side of the earth in that time. So even if they did know you planted the seed, they'll never catch you once it's a problem.
@xDx Diesel Now, I can't read people's minds, but my best guess to what he meant was: it is so expected of Texas-chan to do everything with guns, that it wouldn't even be irony to make fun of her for it.
This reminds me of gorse in New Zealand. They flower twice a year, are incredibly resilient, flammable, resistant to chemicals, and will continue to spread no matter what we do
When I was about 5, I lived in a house in a desert-like area. There were a lot of tumbleweed there so to make use of our resources, my dad, my brother and I build these houses out of the tumbleweed. Well, they were more like caves but it was. We called it “tumble town”.
@@webbowser8834 Cockroaches might be one of the most misunderstood life forms out there. Worthy of a CGP Grey video, really. Spoiler alert: They're hardly invincible.
When I ran on my high school's cross country team, we would go running down trails that would occasionally become so clogged with tumbleweeds that they'd be unusable for us short pant-legged runners.
I remember running cross country back in high school running down a country road and a fucking tumbleweed came of of god Damn no where and lodged itself onto my shirt and head with its stupid thorns and I still have some scars on my neck
@@AriNava1 It's for the joke that the tumbleweed is fertilising its own seeds. By a comparison to animals, it is having sex with itself, hence the blurring for censorship.
I am from Russia. Most of Russians never see it, as this plant only lives in DESERTED areas, which is Kasachstan now. And btw, *Russian Empire played BIG role in victory of Northern States during civil war, which today is USA* , which kinda destroys theory of Russian sabotage. Yes, and it was betrayed by England in WW1, then also when it became USSR. So much for "allies". PLUS - Russia got Colorado Beetle from USA, but *nobody* talks about American Invasion. Its AMAZING how illogically alienating some US people are.
I was hanging out with my cousins, making a fire and just having conversations. When one cousin took a tumble weed (about a meter in diameter) and chucked it into the fire. Everyone had to take a few steps back from the fire since it was so hot, so big, and so bright. It went up instantly… it was so bad we even asked if he put lighter fluid or something on it. After learning about tumbles (and me memory fresh in mind), I also share the hatred of tumbles and understand their dangers.
Grey: Tumbles are like snow, a little is charming. But a lot is a problem, and a lot a lot is dangerous. Me, living in Wyoming, buried in 20 feet of snow and tumbleweeds: I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
@@shadow51090 I wish it was that beautiful, but they just get covered in a thin layer of ice and increase the power of impact. A tumbleweed 6 foot across could probably knock you off the road if it hits you hard enough.
When I lived in Lubbock, Texas, I was 5 years old. But the one thing I remember the best were the day(s) long wind storms, with the tumbleweeds bouncing along in front of the house. If you're ever thinking about going to Lubbock, Texas, don't. It's not meant for human habitation.
As a Lubbockite, can confirm. It is a city built for cars and restaurants. There's no reason for a human to come here. However cars will find a paradise of neatly packed roads and parking lots, except near the forbidden tech forrest, where they can frolick and play to their heart's content.
@@the1exnay I love this, and the fact that those that don't have a clue about Lubbock they won't understand. It's one of those, if you know, you know things.
@@Wick9876 That's not what they mean. They mean things like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs. Because if you go to war with a noun like "Drugs" there's literally no way you can win. The context of the quote means everything
Thank you. Was utterly intrigued by this butter war you mentioned and looked it up. Legitimately, the single most hilarious Wikipedia article I've ever read. Especially this sentence, "A Danish television show broadcast an "emergency appeal" for viewers to send butter and gathered 4,000 packs to be distributed to butter-starved Norwegians." Please tell me there are "survived the butter crisis of 2011" shirts out there. I need one.
Fun fact: some small towns collect tumbleweed into large piles, along with other things people want burned, and every now and then, they light it aflame, its pretty cool to watch.
"Other things they want burned." ...hm, interesting. And nobody would ever know what you dropped off in there you say? A whole town worth of trash you say? What, no, idk, just making conversation...
You just gave my 6th grade report on tumbleweeds... but you probably did it better than me. I got an A so I'm giving you an A+. (I'll be 42 in a few days so I find it amazing that I can remember what grade I got on a report that I did in 6th grade. It's crazy what we remember and don't remember from school.)
@@hhaavvvvii Ikr. It totally changed my life when my school and some 7th grade teachers took our entire lunch break to basically tell us to wash our hands. I never knew that a thing such as washing your hands existed. If the school hadn't told us,I would probably never have learnt to wash my hands. Who knows what would've happened to me then?
Ryan Scheel Also too many people don’t correctly wash their hands in an effective manner to maximize the removal of germs. There’s been observational scientific studies by authorities like the USDA and NIH that estimate anywhere between 90-95% of people don’t wash their hands properly. So there’s a good chance even if you do wash your hands, you aren’t actually meeting the effective standards of national health authorities because the majority of people don’t. The most common error seems to be not washing hands for long enough. Most of us do wash our hands with good hygiene intention but just aren’t doing so for long enough as we’re just trying to get in and out of the bathroom quickly.
I spent a great portion of the video being horrified by Grey's description of tumbleweeds spreading. It's *not even* a microscopic threat, and yet it spreads hilariously fast and a single seed making its way through a boundary is enough. When you look at it like that, it's a miracle we hadn't yet been wiped out by *some* disease our immune systems can't deal with...
A tumbleweed as big as a man hit my car on the highway, it was so big i thought id wreck, well it must have weighed a pound because it just bounced off.
A tumbleweed the size of a man (which is moderately big) weighs around 10-20 pounds, unless it is wet. Most people could easily lift several of that size, if they could get past all the scratchies and somehow get their hands on them all.
problem is its pretty harmless in Russian climate because it modarates itself, but in hot and dry souther US climates it is in tumbleheaven and can populate like crazy
Man I have been binging your videos, not only is your narration very nice, but you bring the topics in such a lighthearted yet deep manner. Amazing content that brings info from a 1h documentary in 10 min with awesome visual aid. And even what I think is going to be the most boring of topics you go and make an amazing video. Keep them coming, I'm in love with them.
Tumbleweed get *everywhere*. I was at a bus station in the LA Metro area, with no non-golf-course green spaces within 15km, and a tumbleweed rolled by.
Funny enough they're not that big of problem in Russia because the local fauna have evolved to consume them in their juvenile form. This is happening to a lesser extent with some Native American species. But the big difference is the arid climate. In Russia due to the snow and rain other plants out compete them for space.
@@uhVerz I live in an area with whole bunch of brambles and thistles. the idea that those fuckers could move and take over towns is horrifying and infuriating. time to declare war.
@@bradhaines3142 maybe on Coronavirus. The youth today have serious climate anxiety. Many voters under 30 say climate change is the number one issue in the US. And rightly so, I think.
@@crazyrobots6565 Climate change is very real, no doubt. But we must unify this nation and fix every single itty problem before we even THINK of fixing the climate problem, which is a WORLD problem.
@@crazyrobots6565 The youth today have no idea how to manage anxiety. Anybody who knows anything about chilling knows that you don't waste time and energy worrying about distant problems whose ramifications are extremely uncertain.
We used to get a lot of tumbleweeds collecting in our backyard in the fall, so we would sometimes use them as kindling in fires, and I can confirm that they indeed burn very quickly and very brightly, although I never noticed the thorns somehow
Begs an obvious question... how good are Tumbles as Fuel?. After all they: • Will grow almost anywere. • Will grow on almost nothing for sustainance. • Are fantastically flammable. • Produce high temp's when burning. • Are an infinitely renewable resource. Basically the Tribbles of Weeds. Why not farm them, shred them once dried & produce - for lack of a better term - 'Tumble Oil' from them?. (the remaining residue being sold to power plants for fuel also)
Best way I can see to use them is in a steam engine, but Id say they burn too fast to be viable to use to power one. Not to mention the total area usage of tumbles compared to coal if you tried to fill a locomotive tender with them for example.
The same reason other kinds of grass and weeds are rarely used as fuel: they produce less energy per volume/per weight compared to coal, peat or wood. Thus they take too much space for storage and transport compared to coal or wood. Sure they're highly flammable and thus well-suited as fire starters. But for continuous burning? You'll need more men to feed the fire and more tumbleweeds to fuel it compared to wood or coal fire.
^ Citation needed (understatement). I also stated the notion of burning a processed "tumble oil", not simply burning unprocessed tumbles. It's worth noting too that mining coal is hardly cheap or safe either, but due to the economy of scale & advance in technical - particularly mechanical - aids has been done successfully for many generations. @@_Zekken Hardly the most efficient way to use the material in my book. I was proposing turning the tumbles into a more optimal format first, a bit like how coal fired power stations crush the coal before it goes in the furnaces. Granted I doubt that a detailed study has been made, but it'd certainly be worth finding out, if at least the most infamous of Russian weeds has such a useful application.
Worth pointing out too that Tumbles are technically Self-Drying, whilst grasses & many typical weeds aren't. (Grass can be hard to compost in large amounts because of the latter downside, and weeds don't tend to combust easily nor burn readily when exposed to fire)
I just found your channel and sincerly, it's like a gold mine. Like I didn't know that i needed to know about tumbleweeds, but MAN i NEEDED to know about this. You're one of the best creators out there, keep it on boy!
Oh boy, you haven't grown up near tumble weeds, have you? xD If you want your entire body to look like it was attacked by 30 cats at once, say no more!
wait until everyone realizes that there are different kinds of tumbles now. where I live there are ones that are giant but with no thorns, ones covered in thorns but really small, circular ones with small twig things that poke you instead, all kinds of things.
Something interesting is that in old westerns and cartoons tumbleweeds are really small. In the town I grew up in they could get MASSIVE you could see them upwards of 6ft wide. It wasn't uncommon to see ranch fences completely overwhelmed by tumbleweeds 😂
@@bricefleckenstein9666 You destroyed the land by shooting the bisons and growing crops. This is the result. If you want to reverse this, you have to use ruminants to regenerate this land and turn it again into a grassland...
solution: burn everything, since tumbleweed is so flammable, it will burn down to nothing problem: everythng will be burnt argument: tumbleweed is part of everything
I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those plants where the seeds survive the fire too, because it seems pretty much purpose-built to frustrate any attempts at controlling it.
@@pepi7404 na. the answer is in the video. tumbleweed needs plains. plant some rows of trees and large hedge bush, not unlike the fire stopping rows of barren land. that will stop the expansion of tumbleweed.
They are round and brown, get everywhere, they multiply uncontrollably, being able to self-pollinate, they dominate ecosystems where they are not native, and yet everybody who isn't too familiar with them finds them charming, romantic even? They're tribbles!
Yes, that's the entire joke of the title. That's the whole point. Good job pointing out the obvious. You're so smart, and the Cs and Ds on your report card clearly mean Clever and Damn Smart, right?
Everyone: Absolutely everyone: I can't wait for the continuation of Grey's series on the Electoral Collage or the Indians or whatever else GCP Grey: *have you ever heard of tumbleweeds*
These tumbleweeds can be like 14 foot long and weigh 200 pounds. Goats love them, cattle love them, when they are green. I have 55 acres, and about 100 goats. We have no issues with tumbleweeds. I wish more would grow here, makes great feed for goats.
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
They say "if you wanna get ridd of the weed you gotta pull it up from the root" but what to do when the weed pulls itself and starts hunting you
Become Soviet
You throw the whole landmass away
Can you smoke it?
Sounds like a Netflix original
@@hamidibrahim4336 lol. A stephen king film.
And what am I supposed to do with this newfound hatred of tumbleweed?
Shuffle?.... everyday? *shrug*
start a tumbleweed eradication business
Burn everything, its the only way to be sure
@@latteARCH This is big business where I am from.
@@razordrive3238 Renewable energy.
I was born in Wyoming and I lived there for the first few years of my life. One of my first memories ever is of a giant sea of tumble weeds coming straight at me and I can attest to the scariness of these things in large numbers. It’s like a bunch of porcupines running at you at full speed.
It had 69 likes until I turned it to 70
@@yndndbehdhdhbs4161 peepee go gwernty?
That ain't scary , I'll tell you what's scary , living in a place where either a gators are always nearby, 50%of your state is a swamp , and 99% of the people can become crazy in an instant
@@yndndbehdhdhbs4161 you’re cruel....
@@battleblaster4203
Ah, I see you are a man from Florida.
I lived in Montana for a couple years and saw them there. I remember in the video game "Sunset Riders" if you touch a tumbleweed your character is injured, but thought that was just a quirk of the game. One day I had a chance to touch one and understood - NOT a game quirk, real.
Just realized that there is an impressive amount of alliteration and rhyme in this video
Bro ur right :D
I never really realized it
You should also check The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant. If I remember correctly it's almost entirely done in rhyme. Really cool.
@@hetspookjee Possibly because it's a poem.
@@Huntracony Possibly
He does that in all of his videos.
i’m starting an anti tumbleweed society in the UK. We can’t actually do anything but just know we stand with you
Solidarität, Zärtlichkeit der Völker...
Thank you 🙏
No
@@tiltil9442 British sure is different from English what even are those letters
@@salmonellq2981 bro what
Hungarians call them "Ördögszekér" which literrally means 'devil's chariot'
Nightkins call them wind brahmin
@@whiterunguard4442 i dont even know
turks call them " " which litreally means nothing
Finns call them "Arokierijä" ie. "Steppe roller"
Funnily enough there's a relative of tumble weed called "Unkarinpernaruoho" aka. "Hungary's spleen grass"
Keanu Reeves enters chat
WumbleTeed
Ratio
A little late
Probably testing his audience engagement for some weird statistics only he can understand. Or maybe it's tumbleweed season.
So let me get this straight:
1. Grey made a video about the Statue of Liberty in which he mentioned federal land
2. That lead him to make a video on federal land in which he mentioned reservations.
3. That lead him to visit said reservations where he encountered TEKOI
4. While exploring TEKOI he encountered a lot of tumbleweed
5. We get this video.
The CGP Grey cinematic universe is truly a sight to behold.
He's been working on the reservations series for 5 years now, he's mentioned he started way back with the American empire video
Yes
When one thing leads to another
Where does the pirate video fall in the universe?
And Grey did a video about visiting the Clorado tumbleweed research lab
So you’re telling me that a single tumbleweed doesn’t just spawn in when a protagonist and an antagonist lock eyes on an empty road while their hands hover near their guns...bullshit
no, it's thousands of them, at once.
The ground shakes as hundreds of thousands of tumbleweeds grow at high noon, causing the tumbleweeds to bounce uncontrollably, so fast that they bounce across water, all the way to Australia
Not mention in the video but tumble weeds are zombies and can come back from the dead to have more babys
Kx
@@RimHellworth when you so horny you wake up from the dead
I sure could use a sad story with no resolution or proposed solution
CGP: "I've got tons, one sec"
*I've got tons, three months
My life is another one you can have, because i dont want it
Engineer a virus witch exsponturly multiply at the same level at a tumble weed this infection consumes the seeds and rewire tumble weeds to never starve themselves out. Cell multiplys eats the whole tumble weed and wind blows it around.
Give them a short life span to avoid mutation and to stop them sticking around when there prey is gone.
@@raddiecat6528 Yep. And there will be no possible way that a virus could mutate and do something unexpected.
@communist crab that sounds kindof hitlery
In Ukraine we have not many of them when compared to videos from US. These are native species to our country as well but they are not in big amounts here, you can see 2-3 of them per mile when crossing uncultivated area. We call it "перекотиполе" (perekotipole) which in approximate translation would sound like "rolloverthefield". Abscense of other high grass species might been the reason why they are so numerous in US.
Do they lonely roll over in Ukraine like we see in Westerns then?
It's literary the tribbles. They are controlled in their native ecosystem.
Only when removed do they reproduce out of control and become a real problem.
Perfect example of an invasive species. In its native environment, it is normal; but on another environment, it is dangerous.
@@iwannaseehowlongyoucanmakethis And uncontrolled.
@@JonatasAdoM No, because we have high grass and bushes and lots of green landscapes:) They are usually stopped by them
Prairies were very common in the plains, so lots of tall grasses, etc., however we lost a majority of them to agriculture.
Horror Movie Pitch: Storm that brings several tumbleweeds to a small town that doesn’t stop for months, breaking windows, knocking over cars, with the tumbleweeds growing bigger over time.
Nathan L And it gets set on fire and starts a fire tornado
Des Mcmahon yes, sharknado but with tumbleweeds, I’ll need a $200m budget
Katamari Reroll - of death.
How about if they aren't just normal tumbleweeds - they are sentient tumbleweeds, with minds of their own and evil intentions. Could be legit scary if done right. ;D
@@someguy3766 That's just tribbles yo
tumbleweeds aren't your ordinary weeds that you can just pluck from the ground,
they pluck themselves and chase you down while making babies along the way
Sounds like a horror movie
@@jinli4787 Beacuse *it is*
@@thecapm6993 it's a nightmare
YES
They're *advanced* weeds.
Australia: _loses a war to emus_
USA: *loses a war to plants*
Lol
Copied
@MUHAMMAD AN NASAIE BIN SHAHROM - You're Fired.
Nice shameful copy-paste...
Some other country: *LOSES A WAR TO GOATS*
Few years ago, during military training, tumbleweed got into the tracks of a tank, as they continued mission, that tumbleweed caught fire, which spread through the entire tank, and the whole tank burnt to a crisp.
And yeah, the crew were fine, only lose was the task and all of their gear.
A Tank can Burn? do you mean there was so much tumbleweed that the heat destroid it, or that the Matrial of the Tank catched fire iteself after a while?
@@carno.5911
The tumbleweeds learned how to jury-rig flamethrowers out of the many, many mechanized farm equipment they consumed over the past centuries.
Definitely a Russian plant.
tumbleweeds for biological warfare?
@@cosmicdahlia That... Could actually work
I want a 10 hours version of the United States Department of Agriculture trying to get rid of tumbleweed
same here
UPVOTE
Same
Big mood.
how about 100 years version?
Everyone’s joking about how this is worse than Australians losing a war against emus, forgetting that we too have tumbleweeds
also australia was invaded by cane toads that they themselves put in
@@aperfectlynormalinternetus6715 also rabbits foxes and pigs
Australia will always have a lot of troubles because humans were never natives to that place. So good luck with everything lol
Humans were never native to anywhere except Africa silly, and indigenous Australians are amongst the oldest civilizations
So basically, Australia has worldwide issues, in addition to... well, being Australia
This makes me want to now see a western parody where two cowboys are having a dramatic standoff and in the background we see a tumbleweed, being chased by a man in a suit.
Or better yet, have two cowboys meet at high noon for a shootout only for both of them to be engulfed by a sudden tumbleweed avalanche. Next scene: both men crawling out of it going "ouh ouh ouh" while picking the thorns out of their clothes.
@@DeHerg this was the reply I was looking for
@FBI Close enough, but its 2 tumbleweeds tumble fighting at high noon at 6 bofors and a guy in suit recording it at the top of a tree.
I mean there is tumble butt just search it up
The two guys are having their standoff, only for a single tumbleweed to roll in between the two.
Both drop their guns and start madly chasing the tumbleweed before it goes any further, because Jesus that shitty little pest isn't gonna meddle with my or my neighbours' fields.
Wild goose chase gag ensues.
OMG I just realized that ghost towns always having Tumbleweeds in media is symbolic of more than just the emptiness and destitution of those towns. It's symbolic of WHY it's a ghost town. Crazy how just a bouncing tumbleweed can suddenly say so much. Almost like "the cat that ate the canary" sort of way but more brazen.
The tumbleweed tells the tale of a growing town gone backrupt due to cruddy harvests driving away the farmers to more fertile land which removes something from the local economy causing some others to leave etc etc.
That just added so much detail to that rogue plant turned trope. If that even makes sense. I'm rambling..thanks for the wonderful video CGP!
Juvenile tumbleweeds are actually edible, and they taste pretty good in salads, sandwiches, pickled, etc. Learning how to spot the baby plants not only gives you an opportunity to remove them but to also try a common yet unconventional food.
Kudzu is also edible.
It's still a pain in the ass. Could be worse though - could be Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) (which is not only invasive, but *toxic* - causing burns when skin exposed to the sap is exposed to light).
So are briers at the the first six inches if the plant leaf end and tentdies
The only way to defeat them, is to eat them.
Unfortunately, the secret is only known to Maple.
@@PyroDesu If eating hogweed would increase poison resistance and grants poison damage skill...
Stinging nettle, also eatable if young.
In my native language tumbleweed is "ördögszekér", which translates as "devil chariot" or "devil's chariot". A kinda fitting name tbh.
Kornél Takács really fit
What is your native language?
@@happyfacefries Hungarian
"The Devil's Chariot" is what the Mujahadeen called the Russian Mi-24 Hind helicopter during the Afghan War
@@TheSecondVersion Cool trivia
Oklahoman here! One night, I was driving into a storm, and just before the rain began to pour, there was this massive gust of wind followed by a ten foot tumbleweed wall momentarily engulfing the road in front of me. One of the most surreal things I've ever seen.
Is the car okay
@@mightypurplelicious1625 The paint probably wasn't.
Send the same thing but it was armadillos
I got a piece of tumbleweed stuck in my air intake, suffocating the engine. We were in the middle of nowhere, Eastern Oregon, and it was a huge pain in the neck getting my sputtering car back into town. It was brand new, too!
I managed not to hit any somehow, so the car was OK! Unfortunately, it has since been totalled in an unrelated incident.
I've lived my entire life in the urban and rural southwestern US. I've never seen a tumbleweed, and now I know why. Thanks Rocky Mountains!
Fun Note: My mom says her family was too poor for a Christmas tree one year so they made one out of tumbleweeds, and she got upset at Santa for replacing it before Christmas morning. I gotta respect the ingenuity making that tree took, but that many thorns on Christmas morning around young children doesn't sound fun for anyone.
The tumbleweeds have even infiltrated US Missile Engine Test Sites.
Lol yeah !
GOOD
this mean that we still watching this video again
So when we finally manage to terraform another planet, it will too be taken over by tumbleweed?
@Ben Siener Did you just make assumption that we will be advanced enough to colonize planet but not to generate CGI environment and instead just turn planet into wild west for a single movie? Wow thats really dumb.
Wait... they plant themselves everywhere and grow exponentially?
Can we breed them to have bigger fruit and smaller spikes? Tumbleberries forever?!
Peter Smythe oh that sounds awesome!
INFINITE FÖÖD SÖURCE
@@temshop5757
Maybe try Nuts?
@@temshop5757 They don't, but maybe with the power of *science* they can actually produce something that makes them worth the trouble
There already are variants that are quite edible as greens (like spinach). Though most of them are high in Oxalates, which makes them poisonous in large quantities (like spinach).
Farming and crossbreeding the wild ones, while pruning less desirable varieties and spreading more desirable may actually be the best method.
There are countless fruits and vegetables that originally ranged from barely edible to mildly poisonouns, which are now considered delicious food staples.
“ I don’t like tumbleweeds. They’re coarse, rough, and irritating, and they get everywhere.”
*What about sand?*
Hello there
You don’t know how true that is.
Mother Nature *GENERAL KENOBI*
Yes. Sand. As a native Dallasite have always been familiar with the occasional sandstorm. But my grandfather lived in Lamesa, he loved it there (or at least would not move); I loved him but hated visiting, sand in everything: air, water, clothes, food, everything. Sand belongs on the ground, not in my eyes and lungs.
Once passed a snow plow digging through a 12 foot tall pile of tumbleweeds that were blocking the road and that was a fascinating anecdote to share. Later when one hit my car on the freeway and jabbed a hole in my bumper I was less enthused.
As a person who was locked out of my house because of tumbleweed, I can confirm that tumbleweed storms are annoying
@Baba Ramdev
What?
@Baba Ramdev don't jinx it dude
@Baba Ramdev tu ek scam aritist he patanjali
@Baba Ramdev For now
@Baba Ramdev What?
Im sure this will help me on my math test tomorrow somehow.
How was it?
@@musashi939 ye how was it
@@mihailmilev9909 why you asking me?
Lol comment more intrest for me.
Did it
I absolutely love this. You've taken an interesting topic that many people have never heard of and perfectly transformed its strange history into a masterpiece of a video. Keep the content rolling! (like tumbleweeds, I suppose).
You see them rolling
Ggggg
ok
Wait, who’s never heard of tumbleweed? It’s like, the most stereotypical atmospheric western backdrop. If you know what a cowboy is, you know what a tumbleweed is.
Clearly you haven’t had your home overtaken by the tumbles.
5:18 The way I always plant my crops in Minecraft is by setting up a grid of trenches filled with water and then planting my crops in the squares of land within them, and one time I was experimenting with flaming arrows (long before they were a thing in Vanilla Minecraft) and accidentally set one of these patches on fire, but fortunately I had those water trenches to keep the rest of my crops from catching on fire.
I never realized these trenches were a real farming technique that people use to prevent a thing that happened to me in Minecraft IRL 😂😂😂
I kind of do want to tell you that if you’re not experimenting with fire, you can have a 9x9 grid being watered by a single block of water, which you can fill in with a slab so you don’t fall in it. That’s an 80:1 ratio of crop:water.
Flaming arrows don't burn land or items though...
@@chicagotypewriter2094 he says before they were vanilla so those probably did!
@@JamesNewham I think you could take this a step further. IIRC water hydrates everything 4 blocks from it, so it could be even more productive!
@@chicagotypewriter2094 that’s accounting for the four blocks from it, but I did just realise you can use height and make a skyscraper with one source
Me: *Sees animation of tumbleweeds* It can't really be that bad.
Also me: *Sees real life footage of tumbleweeds* THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE!
Me from the U.K. who’s never seen tumbleweed in my life: “Ahh yes big problem”
well... im from russia and never seen any either
@@ЮрийНазаров-ф5ж i think the forest in russia dont let them spred like crazy
Oklahoma doesn't have many tumble weeds if any cause I live there a new been every there
@@ЮрийНазаров-ф5ж but tumbleweeds are native to russia
See what the Americans feel like by planting a tumbleweed seed in your backyard or something
I just noticed now. At 4:55 Texas is trying to shoot it off her arm with a revolver :D
As a Texan. Yes.
Maybe Florida to
4:56 actually
Based
that explains why they tried that with covid19
Those tumble takeovers are no joke, my home got over run one year when hundred and hundred blew in one windy day. Some were bigger than I was at the time, I was in my mid teens. Crazy stuff.
Yes the tumbleweeds in Yakima Washington were bigger than me although I was a tiny teen.
Me, a Russian: Oh wow these tumbleweeds are so exotic I've never saw any in my country
Tumbleweed: From Russia with love
Typical Russia, first interfering with voting, now agriculture.
Edit: Yes they are reversed, jokes don't necessarily have only one punchline, please stop flooding my notifications pointing that out.
ethanpet113 but they interfered with the agriculture before the voting
@Marc T That makes sense, lots of wind and empty space to tumble around.
@In Hoc Signo Diliget I'd rather say the US stole Russia's tumbleweed _and_ took the fame from it
Since, y'know, it's native to Russia but nobody remembers that
@@nataliaborys1554 like hamburgers
Everyone: Coronavirus is taking over the world!
CGP Grey: TUMBLEWEEEEEEED!!!!
Taking over America since the 1800s.
*TUMBLES!
Captain Kirk: TRIBBLES!!
The sad fact is, tumbleweed will be around a lot longer than covid19. Small comfort it doesn't kill as many people.
Tumbleweed is like a virus, I guess
Before the video: They're cute, I guess
After the video: They're the devil, I guess
Thanks for the smile :)
Hmm?
Let’s declare war on them!
As they say: devil hides behind ignorance.
@@Phoenix_The_HeroHater if emu can slap our asses, imagine what these magnificent things can do to us
"One stuck tumble becomes two, ten a *tumulus*."
Favourite new word of the day, right there
I always thought tumbleweed flying across a screen was just a cool metaphor for vast emptiness and desolation. Boy, was I wrong.😅
its a metaphor for the hell that will come afterwards
same
@@wayababaya what is that pfp?? It’s like zongli (from genshin impact) but no
@@HideFromIt yes its zhongli
@@wayababaya cursed impact
"One study showed that a single Russian thistle can remove up to 167 liters (44 gallons) of water from the soil in competition with a wheat crop in one year." -the wikipedia
Yikes
the definition of *s u c c*
Yea, blame Russia again. Typical americans.
Crazmuss ? He said that tumble weeds are also called Russian thistle how is he blaming Russia?
@@Crazmuss The plant is LITERALLY from Russia! xD
@@MrBigCookieCrumble developed by russian biohackers?
Things Grey has a problem with :
- Tumbleweed
- Pennies (I've never seen 1 cent coins before)
- Electoral College
- Untidy Spreadsheets
- Old Mac books that have a bad thermal cooling system (lol)
- The story of Staten Island
And more to come...
- Death
- Airplane Seats
- Old British infrastructure that have a bad thermal cooling system (lol)
also First Past the Post voting
Where's the cooling stuff?
One cent coins are still widely used in the USA. I'm Canadian and we only got rid of pennies in 2013.
What about new Macbooks that have bad thermal cooling system?
Me and my mom used to live in a small town in Colorado, relatively near the western Colorado desert, which in case you don’t know, is infested with tumbleweed. And a true testament to how far they can travel is the nearest tumbleweed inhabited area was about 2 miles west of us. And we still occasionally had tumbles rolling down the street. And one time one literally attacked me, it *curved* towards me and slammed into me. It hurt like hell because as you said they are mega thorny. But I walked away with zero lasting damage, watch out, tumbles are mean, and they absolutely have a mind of their own
Well researched, well written, well-voiced, well animated--just another highly interesting video from CGP Grey.
@Drew Kangaroo LOL! You caught me. I'm a novelist and book reviewer. www.amazon.com/-/e/B01M3Q35H1
When he says they're sticky, aka thorny, oh God, I had flashbacks of Boy Scouts and we would clean the local highway of tumbleweeds.
Those mothers latch on and never let go. And yes, we would just bust out the pitchforks, chuck them into a trailer, and crush them down into bags of kindling for fire starting!
ooh man!!!
So they’re essentially like bushes of nettles? Or those little versions of milk thistle that explode into seeds when something touches them?
@@AVerySexuallyDeviantOrange on my notifications it sait a very sexually deviant orange said so they're essentially...
so i thought someone said that a sexually deviant orange said that lol
@@AVerySexuallyDeviantOrange They're nettles who have grown up, hate the world and all living things, and want everyone to suffer.
They're the Joker and the Leeroy Jenkins of the plant world.
And they hate you.
So boiling in glue and water. Then compressing it into logs. You've got firewood without trees.
Did anyone notice that the studio gradually got filled up with tumbleweed until at the end CGP Gray had to move to not be impaled I just thought that it was a nice touch
You've got a nice touch too ;-)
@@woolworthspossum4370 N O
YOU SPELT GREY WRONG
@@jeanneisy 'gray' is the American spelling but YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT
Back in Idaho a few years back, I was driving home on a windy Wednesday night with a 5 hour journey into Oregon the following morning. Tumbleweeds were blowing all over creation and a MASSIVE ONE flew right in front of me with no room for me to swerve. My truck has a decent lift on it, so I thought I'd be fine. But as soon as it went under, I lost all power steering and most of the warning lights came on.
That thing took off my serpentine belt!!!
Spent about an hour I didn't have getting it back on in a Burger King parking lot, the tensioner was not being friendly. But I got it on and that belt is still there today.
I drove into an adjacent walmart and upon further inspection found out it had lodged itself underneath my rear axle. Fun times, and I still made it to Oregon the next morning
There are 2 ways to destroy a village:
Illegal way: plant a bomb
Legal way: plant a tumbleweed seed
Im not sure but the second why might also be illegal but the prosecution will have a harder time proving intent
@@charnel8435 if they can ever prove it.. also planting a few tumbleweed is like expecting results in a few year's/decades
@@adorablecheetah2930 that's the best part! You could be on the other side of the earth in that time. So even if they did know you planted the seed, they'll never catch you once it's a problem.
Tumbleweed has been planted
Mialisus oil is a lot more efficient
4:56 Texas trying to shoot a tumbleweed off her arm is iconic
wow I don't notice that
@xDx Diesel I'm not sure that's what he ment
@xDx Diesel Now, I can't read people's minds, but my best guess to what he meant was: it is so expected of Texas-chan to do everything with guns, that it wouldn't even be irony to make fun of her for it.
I would’ve just shoot tranquilizers at the wind so it can’t move
I am *S M O R D*
MrToasteer Texas-chan do be shooting at a corpse
Australians: We lost a war against the emus.
Americans: Hold my gun.
-s
Hold my McDonalds lol
@The Coward Liberius haha
America has also lost a war on squirrels that nobody ever talks about.
ight bet
This reminds me of gorse in New Zealand. They flower twice a year, are incredibly resilient, flammable, resistant to chemicals, and will continue to spread no matter what we do
When I was about 5, I lived in a house in a desert-like area. There were a lot of tumbleweed there so to make use of our resources, my dad, my brother and I build these houses out of the tumbleweed. Well, they were more like caves but it was. We called it “tumble town”.
Wow
Interesting! You got to make a RUclips video about that. 😉👍
Did the thorns not cause a problem?
Dicks a
Ty Pryor Where I’m from I’ve seen tumbleweed snowmen (complete with hats and scarves) because people gave up on snow that winter. 🤣🤣
Tumbleweeds : Starve themselves,to die, and to dry for their children
me : Aww that's very sad
also me after a few mins later : Jesus...
As it turns out, short reproductive cycles are the number one way to survive humans. Just ask Cockroaches.
@@boaramongstpigs I am legitimately pissed off you didn't rick roll me boomer.
@@boaramongstpigs jesus
iamaplatypus 1234 Nothing against you, but I don't think you realise just how annoying this type of comment is. And I say this as a Christian.
@@webbowser8834 Cockroaches might be one of the most misunderstood life forms out there. Worthy of a CGP Grey video, really. Spoiler alert: They're hardly invincible.
When I ran on my high school's cross country team, we would go running down trails that would occasionally become so clogged with tumbleweeds that they'd be unusable for us short pant-legged runners.
The Observer that’s why you run in jeans and boots
I remember running cross country back in high school running down a country road and a fucking tumbleweed came of of god Damn no where and lodged itself onto my shirt and head with its stupid thorns and I still have some scars on my neck
@@codyday9848 That's definitely the best outfit for an athletic activity
@@OdaKa our fastest runner basically did this one time as a flex, though instead of boots they used Converse.
Now I'm imagining a group of short people that have pants for legs. Thanks.
“Each tumbleweed starts as a seed”
You mean…
A tumbleseed?
Get out
@@bullterriergaming6424 I thought it was pretty funny
2:45 "A lone tumbleweed can fu... *pollinate* itself"
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Why was it blurred
Reasons...
He doesn’t wanna get demonized
@@AriNava1 It's for the joke that the tumbleweed is fertilising its own seeds. By a comparison to animals, it is having sex with itself, hence the blurring for censorship.
@@pedalwerk Dude 😑
Real title: "How russia succesfully sabotaged the American farming industry"
Hmm why not use genetic weapon to fight tumbleweed (probably to risky)
I am from Russia. Most of Russians never see it, as this plant only lives in DESERTED areas, which is Kasachstan now. And btw, *Russian Empire played BIG role in victory of Northern States during civil war, which today is USA* , which kinda destroys theory of Russian sabotage. Yes, and it was betrayed by England in WW1, then also when it became USSR. So much for "allies". PLUS - Russia got Colorado Beetle from USA, but *nobody* talks about American Invasion. Its AMAZING how illogically alienating some US people are.
@@HECKAKYH-ADEKBATEH it's a joke you know
If CNN made this video
@@HECKAKYH-ADEKBATEH Не знал что из далекого казахстана такая вещь противная прилетит и осядет
Me reading title "well this must be a joke video, right?... right?"
After video : "Tumble weed of death"
I was hanging out with my cousins, making a fire and just having conversations. When one cousin took a tumble weed (about a meter in diameter) and chucked it into the fire. Everyone had to take a few steps back from the fire since it was so hot, so big, and so bright. It went up instantly… it was so bad we even asked if he put lighter fluid or something on it.
After learning about tumbles (and me memory fresh in mind), I also share the hatred of tumbles and understand their dangers.
Grey: Tumbles are like snow, a little is charming. But a lot is a problem, and a lot a lot is dangerous.
Me, living in Wyoming, buried in 20 feet of snow and tumbleweeds: I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Do they fuse into snow-tumbles?
I live in Florida and I've never seen a tumbleweed
@@shadow51090 I wish it was that beautiful, but they just get covered in a thin layer of ice and increase the power of impact. A tumbleweed 6 foot across could probably knock you off the road if it hits you hard enough.
It's really snow tumble
Sorry, I just wanted to
@@xxsharkhunterxxsharkhunter6109 lol so do I but ... check my other comment. XD u wouldnt happen to live on the gooch of FL as well would you.
When I lived in Lubbock, Texas, I was 5 years old. But the one thing I remember the best were the day(s) long wind storms, with the tumbleweeds bouncing along in front of the house.
If you're ever thinking about going to Lubbock, Texas, don't.
It's not meant for human habitation.
Be honest. With our weather was any of Texas meant for human habitation?
Ah but don't forget the massive dust storms during droughts! (Coming from a person who lived near Lubbock for 17 years.)
As a Lubbockite, can confirm. It is a city built for cars and restaurants. There's no reason for a human to come here.
However cars will find a paradise of neatly packed roads and parking lots, except near the forbidden tech forrest, where they can frolick and play to their heart's content.
@@the1exnay I love this, and the fact that those that don't have a clue about Lubbock they won't understand. It's one of those, if you know, you know things.
Too late, I'm already here for Tech.
Humans: Robots will take over the world in future
Tumbleweed: Hold my seeds
That's equivalent to saying:
Humans: Our creation will take over the world in the future.
Tumbleweed: Hold my unborn children.
Robot: wtf!! *Shorts out due to clogged gears*
@@mckstellar1005 _Life finds a way _*_to destroy humanity and its inventions_*
Lewd..
TAKE MY SEEDS
Ohhhh yeah, plains, you love it don't you...
Tumbleweeds actually produce a form of petroleum, which explains why they ignite so easily and are hard to extinguish.
*Us government wants to know your location*
US military has declared war against tumbleweeds
It must be called _plantoleum_ 😄
The us government now wants to cultivate and harvest the oil.
Desert storm in the west
Just as they say on Crash Course U.S. History *"Don't declare war on a noun. You will always lose."*
Germany is a noun, so I think what is in that quote must be improper.
@@Wick9876 That's not what they mean. They mean things like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs. Because if you go to war with a noun like "Drugs" there's literally no way you can win. The context of the quote means everything
@@Wick9876 improper noun. I saw what you did there!
@@GroundBack Great australian example: The Emu War
@@GroundBack you could win a war against most nouns like cutlery, shelves, pans ect.
USA: Loses war against tumbleweeds (1860)
Australia: Loses war against emus (1932)
Norway: Loses war against butter (2011)
Thank you. Was utterly intrigued by this butter war you mentioned and looked it up. Legitimately, the single most hilarious Wikipedia article I've ever read. Especially this sentence, "A Danish television show broadcast an "emergency appeal" for viewers to send butter and gathered 4,000 packs to be distributed to butter-starved Norwegians." Please tell me there are "survived the butter crisis of 2011" shirts out there. I need one.
Ha ha I live in Norway and I remembered that lol
@D Zuke =googles it=
Yes.
They also lost the war against cats, too, apparently.
@@fantasticfox175Apparently wars aren't just fought against insects, but with insects too.
Lamo
Fun fact: some small towns collect tumbleweed into large piles, along with other things people want burned, and every now and then, they light it aflame, its pretty cool to watch.
Sounds lit.
Witch hunts to weed hunts. We're getting better
"Other things they want burned." ...hm, interesting. And nobody would ever know what you dropped off in there you say? A whole town worth of trash you say? What, no, idk, just making conversation...
Won't the upwind from the fire spread more of those seeds?
@@jaypaans3471 i guess it didn't matter anymore 🤔
You just gave my 6th grade report on tumbleweeds... but you probably did it better than me. I got an A so I'm giving you an A+.
(I'll be 42 in a few days so I find it amazing that I can remember what grade I got on a report that I did in 6th grade. It's crazy what we remember and don't remember from school.)
People with a normal education: Afghanistan is the longest American conflict.
CGP Grey: No...
People: The Indian Wars?
CGP Grey: *Tumbleweed*
Yes
Wasn't Afghanistan the USSR's problem (Ofc USA contributed against the Russians but indirectly)? I think you mean Vietnam?
@@Blade.5786 We have had troops in Afghanistan for about 20 years.
We'd be better off fighting emus.
@@hasanmuhammad6651 AHHH
The world: everyone wash your hands, Coronavirus is spreading fast.
Grey: *tumbleweeds*
I have never washed my hands before. It's good that they finally teach us about it
@@whoeveriam0iam14222 I know you're being facetious, but too many people don't wash their hands or do so regularly enough.
@@hhaavvvvii Ikr. It totally changed my life when my school and some 7th grade teachers took our entire lunch break to basically tell us to wash our hands. I never knew that a thing such as washing your hands existed. If the school hadn't told us,I would probably never have learnt to wash my hands. Who knows what would've happened to me then?
Ryan Scheel Also too many people don’t correctly wash their hands in an effective manner to maximize the removal of germs. There’s been observational scientific studies by authorities like the USDA and NIH that estimate anywhere between 90-95% of people don’t wash their hands properly. So there’s a good chance even if you do wash your hands, you aren’t actually meeting the effective standards of national health authorities because the majority of people don’t. The most common error seems to be not washing hands for long enough. Most of us do wash our hands with good hygiene intention but just aren’t doing so for long enough as we’re just trying to get in and out of the bathroom quickly.
I spent a great portion of the video being horrified by Grey's description of tumbleweeds spreading. It's *not even* a microscopic threat, and yet it spreads hilariously fast and a single seed making its way through a boundary is enough.
When you look at it like that, it's a miracle we hadn't yet been wiped out by *some* disease our immune systems can't deal with...
A tumbleweed as big as a man hit my car on the highway, it was so big i thought id wreck, well it must have weighed a pound because it just bounced off.
To be fair, a man would bounce off also
A tumbleweed the size of a man (which is moderately big) weighs around 10-20 pounds, unless it is wet. Most people could easily lift several of that size, if they could get past all the scratchies and somehow get their hands on them all.
@@whiteshadow6373 lmaoooooo
@@merpius life several?
@@uhhidk8253 typo. Fixed it now. Thanks.
The trouble with Tumbles.. What a great homage to one of the best pieces of television, The troubles with Tribbles
Funny how I live my whole life in Russia and I've NEVER seen a tumbleweed and think of it as something from the south of the US lol
To be fair to you, Russia is a huge country with lots of different climates, maybe they're not native to the part of Russia you're from
I was wondering about this too. Maybe they come from Astrakhan?
problem is its pretty harmless in Russian climate because it modarates itself, but in hot and dry souther US climates it is in tumbleheaven and can populate like crazy
If it does really well on the Prairie, i'd imagine it's native to the Steppe, since they're quite similar climates (BSk and Dfa or thereabouts)
@@joanignasi91 Well the US isn't exactly small either. And they have an even bigger climate variety. And they're still everywhere.
0:02, that animation was crazy awesome.
3D nice
4:56 Texas is literally trying to shoot the tumbleweed off of her arm
😆
As a Texan, yes
Man I have been binging your videos, not only is your narration very nice, but you bring the topics in such a lighthearted yet deep manner. Amazing content that brings info from a 1h documentary in 10 min with awesome visual aid. And even what I think is going to be the most boring of topics you go and make an amazing video. Keep them coming, I'm in love with them.
Tumbleweed get *everywhere*. I was at a bus station in the LA Metro area, with no non-golf-course green spaces within 15km, and a tumbleweed rolled by.
Oh god, their in the cities now!
This video in a nutshell: "It's called a weed for a reason"
Can you get tumblehigh from it?
Marco Giovani yeah, but then you’ll fall and tumbledie
@@madhououinkyoma lmao
@@madhououinkyoma but first I would just tumblehide!
there's no hiding from it, is there?
Thanks for the laugh at 4am, dammit 😂
May I request a 10-hour version of US agricultural department trying to weed out tumbleweeds?
How about an extended gif?
Олег Козлов y e s
So what I'm getting from this is, tumbleweeds are the Tribbles of the plant world.
Thank you for calling out Grey’s reference to ST. Looked all through the comments for this.
the russians' pre-emptive strike came way before i thought it would...
Funny enough they're not that big of problem in Russia because the local fauna have evolved to consume them in their juvenile form. This is happening to a lesser extent with some Native American species. But the big difference is the arid climate. In Russia due to the snow and rain other plants out compete them for space.
@@robertalaverdov8147 humans also can eat them while they are still young.
lol
before this video:
me: awww tumbleweed are cute!
after this video:
me: tumble weed are evil.
They're plotting against us
@@uhVerz I live in an area with whole bunch of brambles and thistles. the idea that those fuckers could move and take over towns is horrifying and infuriating. time to declare war.
nooo theyre still cute... theyre doing their best... its just too good
like most girls I know
I thought that way until I moved to Arizona
Everyone: Oh no! Global Warming, New Corona Virus!
CGP Grey: Oh no! Tumble Weeds!
the 'everyone' bit is just the media really. ignore them and things get more reasonable
@@bradhaines3142 maybe on Coronavirus. The youth today have serious climate anxiety. Many voters under 30 say climate change is the number one issue in the US. And rightly so, I think.
@@crazyrobots6565 Climate change is very real, no doubt. But we must unify this nation and fix every single itty problem before we even THINK of fixing the climate problem, which is a WORLD problem.
@@memesarekeem ummm...how about no? Climate change is the most urgent problem for US as well as the world.
@@crazyrobots6565 The youth today have no idea how to manage anxiety. Anybody who knows anything about chilling knows that you don't waste time and energy worrying about distant problems whose ramifications are extremely uncertain.
We used to get a lot of tumbleweeds collecting in our backyard in the fall, so we would sometimes use them as kindling in fires, and I can confirm that they indeed burn very quickly and very brightly, although I never noticed the thorns somehow
"Itty bitty baby tumbles to be" is the best thing I've heard all hour
Yeah same
Begs an obvious question... how good are Tumbles as Fuel?.
After all they:
• Will grow almost anywere.
• Will grow on almost nothing for sustainance.
• Are fantastically flammable.
• Produce high temp's when burning.
• Are an infinitely renewable resource.
Basically the Tribbles of Weeds.
Why not farm them, shred them once dried & produce - for lack of a better term - 'Tumble Oil' from them?.
(the remaining residue being sold to power plants for fuel also)
Or do steam plants with them... using the tumble as fuel. That's... a rather great idea...
Best way I can see to use them is in a steam engine, but Id say they burn too fast to be viable to use to power one. Not to mention the total area usage of tumbles compared to coal if you tried to fill a locomotive tender with them for example.
The same reason other kinds of grass and weeds are rarely used as fuel: they produce less energy per volume/per weight compared to coal, peat or wood.
Thus they take too much space for storage and transport compared to coal or wood.
Sure they're highly flammable and thus well-suited as fire starters. But for continuous burning? You'll need more men to feed the fire and more tumbleweeds to fuel it compared to wood or coal fire.
^ Citation needed (understatement).
I also stated the notion of burning a processed "tumble oil", not simply burning unprocessed tumbles.
It's worth noting too that mining coal is hardly cheap or safe either, but due to the economy of scale & advance in technical - particularly mechanical - aids has been done successfully for many generations.
@@_Zekken Hardly the most efficient way to use the material in my book. I was proposing turning the tumbles into a more optimal format first, a bit like how coal fired power stations crush the coal before it goes in the furnaces.
Granted I doubt that a detailed study has been made, but it'd certainly be worth finding out, if at least the most infamous of Russian weeds has such a useful application.
Worth pointing out too that Tumbles are technically Self-Drying, whilst grasses & many typical weeds aren't.
(Grass can be hard to compost in large amounts because of the latter downside, and weeds don't tend to combust easily nor burn readily when exposed to fire)
"still trying to rid America of the weed, but so far without success."
You can make a video on the war on drugs and just recycle that clip.
The war on drugs is over
Drugs won
cool
"The war on drugs isn't a war. Wars end."-the Wire
@@ruthswann88 The war on drugs was never a war on drugs. It was a war on the non-whites in America using drugs as a front.
A video that I never imagined would exist and that I never thought I would watch.
I love it.
The world: **Lose wars against other countries**
Australia: **Loses war against Emus**
America: **LOSES WAR AGAINST A PLANT**
@too.comment.god this is some big brain shit right here.
Jungles speak Vietnamese, Tumbleweed speaks russian
N'gis Stemeveiche we didn’t lose the tumblewar.
Cause we’re still fighting it to this day.
A war without end.
@Aviator What other plant, Poison Ivy?
Kudzu
Everybody gangsta till cgp grey uploads.
With his stylish black glasses he's not someone you want to mess with.
Best not to tumble with him.
Only Kurzgesagt measures up.
Why do I see your comments everywhere
Oh shit he’s an a call for an uprising subscriber he must be insane
Jesus 500 likes in 20 minutes
tumbleweeds when they see a crop: "There ain't enough room in town for both of us"
the world is big enough. for both of us.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah. AAAaaaaaaaaaah.....
[bouncy cowboy bounces between both of them]
@@vladthemagnificent9052 I have a mouth but I can't scream...
I just found your channel and sincerly, it's like a gold mine. Like I didn't know that i needed to know about tumbleweeds, but MAN i NEEDED to know about this. You're one of the best creators out there, keep it on boy!
Me: “yay all those tumbles look so fun to jump in”
Video 5 seconds later: “ they have thorns all over them :3 “
Me: “oh”
Same🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
Oh boy, you haven't grown up near tumble weeds, have you? xD
If you want your entire body to look like it was attacked by 30 cats at once, say no more!
we need to construct something that you can wear to make it safe to jump in, then
Do not sentence someone to death, male them clean up the tumbleshit without protection
wait until everyone realizes that there are different kinds of tumbles now. where I live there are ones that are giant but with no thorns, ones covered in thorns but really small, circular ones with small twig things that poke you instead, all kinds of things.
Something interesting is that in old westerns and cartoons tumbleweeds are really small. In the town I grew up in they could get MASSIVE you could see them upwards of 6ft wide. It wasn't uncommon to see ranch fences completely overwhelmed by tumbleweeds 😂
Many ARE small - but they do get big SOMETIMES.
@@bricefleckenstein9666 You destroyed the land by shooting the bisons and growing crops. This is the result.
If you want to reverse this, you have to use ruminants to regenerate this land and turn it again into a grassland...
@@btudrus No, tumbleweeds are NOT a result.
They ARE the result of some of their seeds getting imported (probably accidentally) from Siberia.
@@bricefleckenstein9666 but lack of tall grass is what allows them to propagate so effectively
solution: burn everything, since tumbleweed is so flammable, it will burn down to nothing
problem: everythng will be burnt
argument: tumbleweed is part of everything
Maybe the seeds arent that flammable on top of that.
Now you've created a nice large patch of barren but fertile land. Only 1 seeds needs to survive to start all over again lmao
I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those plants where the seeds survive the fire too, because it seems pretty much purpose-built to frustrate any attempts at controlling it.
You just need to spread another weed, that grows and spreads even faster and starves out the tumbles.
@@pepi7404 na. the answer is in the video. tumbleweed needs plains. plant some rows of trees and large hedge bush, not unlike the fire stopping rows of barren land. that will stop the expansion of tumbleweed.
This channel is so entertaining, they manage to make me watch them talking about tumbleweeds, yet I still wan't more to hear about them
They are round and brown, get everywhere, they multiply uncontrollably, being able to self-pollinate, they dominate ecosystems where they are not native, and yet everybody who isn't too familiar with them finds them charming, romantic even?
They're tribbles!
Yes, that's the entire joke of the title. That's the whole point. Good job pointing out the obvious. You're so smart, and the Cs and Ds on your report card clearly mean Clever and Damn Smart, right?
Hence the video title ^ straight-out reference to tribbles
@@realityveil6151 you don't need to be an asshole about it though
uhm, that's why they got William Shatner to narrate.
@@realityveil6151 Does it make you feel good, to put others down behind a wall of anonymity? Are you truly that pathetically insecure?
Gray: Tumble tumble weed weed tumble tumble tumble weed
Me: Hmm, yes.
now say that fast three times
My name is Doug Dimmadome owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome
*insert funny jojoke*
Tumble Weed Tumble Weed Ooooh Tumble Tumble
Everyone:
Absolutely everyone: I can't wait for the continuation of Grey's series on the Electoral Collage or the Indians or whatever else
GCP Grey: *have you ever heard of tumbleweeds*
Embrace the chaos that is Grey's video priorities!
These tumbleweeds can be like 14 foot long and weigh 200 pounds. Goats love them, cattle love them, when they are green. I have 55 acres, and about 100 goats. We have no issues with tumbleweeds. I wish more would grow here, makes great feed for goats.