It all reminds me a well-known novel by John Wyndham "The Day of the Triffids". It was about the great cataclysm when almost the whole humanity became blind and the Triffids, the plants, that were capable to move and even to communicate, previously used as a food, begin their maeating revange.
Sure, they were the product of the Empire of Evil, somehow bioengineered there. >_<