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The world today faces a great challenge in the emergence of drug-resistant microbes and dangerous cancers against most of the commonly known antimicrobial and anticancer drugs, respectively. Screening for effective, new, and cheap remedies from natural resources has become the goal of many scientists all around the world. The plants’ methanol extracts used in this study were red cabbage (RC) and mung bean sprout (MBS) which both showed remarkable antiviral activities against herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The mode of action of RC extract was shown to be prophylactic against RSV (the concentration that inhibit 50% of virus cytopathic effect (IC50) = 13.9 mg/ml and selectivity index (SI) = 17.67). Against HSV-1, RC extract showed a remarkable viricidal activity (IC50 = 11.51 mg/ml and SI = 34.52) with less prophylactic activity (IC50 = 32.97 mg/ml and SI = 11.71). MBS extract had viricidal effect (IC50 = 15.62 mg/ml and SI = 14.18), (IC50 = 7.62 mg/ml and SI = 18.23) and to a lesser extent prophylactic (IC50 = 17.23 mg/ml and SI = 12.82), (IC50 = 12.72 mg/ml and SI = 10.9) against RSV and HSV-1 viruses, respectively. One of the good explaination on the effective prophylactic activities of MBS and RC extracts was their excuisite ability to induce production of high levels of IFNβ, TNFα, IL-1, and IL-6 cytokines (300-900% higher levels when compared to untreated cells; P<0.0001) in virally infected cells. These antiviral cytokines proved to play critical and synergistic role in the antiviral resistance of human cells. For the cytotoxic effects of the tested extracts, RC extract showed selective cytotoxic effect against human cervix adenocarcinoma cells (HeLa), (SI = 10.88) while it showed less selectivity against human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2), (SI = 8.93). On the contrary, MBS extract showed a selective cytotoxic effect against both HeLa and HepG2 cells with SI values of 12.44 and 11.94, respectively. In an atte