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{{trope}}
[[File:Image change 802.jpg|frame|
{{quote|"''They're like [[Horde of Alien Locusts|locusts]]. Moving from planet to planet, their entire civilization. They consume every resource, and then they move on.''"
|''[[Independence Day]]''}}
'''Planet
▲{{quote|"''They're like [[Horde of Alien Locusts|locusts]]. Moving from planet to planet, their entire civilization. They consume every resource, and then they move on.''"|''[[Independence Day]]''}}
▲Planet looters are a race of aliens that have run out of something, and must steal it from others. Frequently, from us here on Earth. This is a bit peculiar in that their demonstrated level of technology makes one wonder why they'd target Earth when it would be far easier to find an uninhabited planet and strip-mine that.
To [[Hand Wave]] that problem, they often need some particular resource which is supposedly rare except on Earth. Water is apparently one of them. Countless aliens have needlessly lost their lives in futile attempts to steal Earth's water. For some reason they overlook comets, dwarf planets and moons in the outer solar system which are not only made of mostly water in convenient prepackaged frozen form but don't have anyone out there to stop them from simply flying away with it.
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Arguably, Medical Mechanica from ''[[FLCL]]'' fits this category.
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* In the Wildstorm comic ''Majestic'', it's discovered that the [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] Kherubim seeded many worlds with Planet-Shaper Engines, which terraform the surface and allow life to evolve; when that life becomes smart enough to do useful work, the Planet-Shapers will generate a flood of genetically recreated Kherubim to conquer said planet and enslave said life, thus spreading the race across the galaxy. Earth is one of those worlds, with a ticking Planet-Shaper under the mantle just waiting to unleash an army of superbeings (luckily it gets dismantled by Majestic). Ironically, their supposed homeworld Khera was also the result of such a seeding; the Planet-Shapers there did their thing millions of years ago.
* The Evronians from Disney's ''[[Paperinik New Adventures]]'' series use weapons that drain all emotions from a sentient victim and convert them into energy (the will-less victims are then used for menial labor). However, since their whole infrastructure is built on using this emotional energy, and you can only ever drain one victim ''once'', they are forced to conquer new planets constantly. Their own scientists know this is unsustainable, but few dare voice that opinion.
* The Horde from ''[[Strikeforce: Morituri]]''. All of their technology was stolen from others, and the only reason they got off their homeworld in the first place was by stealing from (and slaughtering) the alien ambassadors who visited them.
* Calvin from ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' once wrote a poem about such aliens visiting Earth. It's too large for the main article, but can be found on the quote page.
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** The uranium was needed just long enough for Exeter's race to relocate to Earth, presumably killing all humans in the process. (Although to his credit, Exeter tried to convince his boss that the humans should stay untouched.)
* The plot of ''[[Star Trek: Insurrection]]'' revolves around [[The Federation]] trying to loot a planet of its [[Fountain of Youth]] [[Phlebotinum]]. Whether you side with the villains or the heroes on this issue is YMMV.
* [[Inverted Trope]] in ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' and ''[[Dueling Movies|Delgo]]'', where [[Humans Are
* In ''[[Battle: Los Angeles]]'', the invaders are theorized by scientists in-universe to require liquid water, which is why they are invading Earth. Their exact motivations are unknown, because the aliens don't talk much, [[Kill All Humans|except with their guns]].
* In ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]: Dark of the Moon'', the reason why Megatron and {{spoiler|[[Face Heel Turn|Sentinel Prime]] want to pull Cybertron into Earth's atmosphere is to use its inhabitants as slave labor in its reconstruction}}. [[Fridge Logic|This would probably destroy Earth]], [[Fridge Brilliance|but why would the Decepticons care?]]
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== Literature ==
* [[Older Than Radio]]: The [[Ur Example]] is ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'', by [[H. G. Wells]], published in 1898. The book depicted a Martian invasion with overt analogies to European hegemony. The invaders have perfectly good reasons: according to contemporary theories, outer planets are the first to form and the first to die. With spaceflight in the [[Jules Verne]] steam cannon stage, the aliens have nowhere to go but inward. The novel heavily implies that when the invasion of Earth doesn't go well, the Martians take over Venus.
* Inverted (perhaps deliberately) in [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]' ''[[Out of the Silent Planet]]'', which has humans as the planet looters trying to conquer Mars—even though the solar system runs under the same theory as Wells', and the Martians point out that their world will die ''before'' Earth.
* In a rare example of humans doing it to other humans, the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|People's Republic of Haven]] from ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' regularly conquers and loots other planets simply to prop up their own failing economy. Things turn ugly when they try to do it to the Star Kingdom of Manticore and their Short Victorious War turns into a long and bloody one. Making matters worse for Haven is the fact that unlike a lot of nonhuman Planet Looters, the Havenites build their newly conquered planets into their own empire. Which means that each looted planet eventually becomes a new drain on the budget, because the cost of keeping it under control will sooner or later be higher than the rewards of looting whatever is still left after ten or twenty years. The parallels to [[Ancient Rome]] may or may not be deliberate.
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* Seriously explored, and eventually subverted, in [[H. Beam Piper]]'s novel ''Space Viking''. The Space Vikings of the title aren't much interested in raw resources; those are cheap. They want manufactured goods, the more sophisticated (and therefore valuable) the better. The only problem is that a planet with enough of an economy to have good loot can, by virtue of that self-same economy, also field a decent space navy, which can generally beat off a Viking raid, resulting in no loot, but lots of expensive damage to the Viking ships. The protagonist over the course of the novel gradually changes from plunder to peaceful trade mainly because it's more profitable (although he is troubled by the doubtful—to put it mildly—morality of it all, too).
* [[John Ringo]]'s Posleen from the ''[[Posleen War Series]]''. Driven by an extremely high birthrate and strong aggressive/acquisitive tendencies (both of which it's hinted were artificially induced), they want land to farm, humans for food, and refined metals just because.
* In Peter F. Hamilton's ''Fallen Dragon'' the mega-corporations on Earth which funded the establishment of
* [[Stephen Baxter]] uses Planet Looters in ''[[Manifold Space]]'', but the aliens attack any planetary bodies they come across. It's just that there are so many of them (with so many different needs) that sooner or later they'll get to the inhabited ones. All of known space has been picked over repeatedly for hundreds of millions of years.
* The Yeerks from ''[[Animorphs]]''. [[Justified Trope]] in that what they want from Earth is something that can only be found on Earth. ''Us''. Or more specifically, our bodies with our big, fat brains ripe for infestation.
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* Subverted in [[Dougal Dixon]]'s ''Man After Man'': {{spoiler|the invaders in the end are ''descendants'', which recolonized the Earth after stripping other planets off their resources}}. Guess what happens afterwards.
* [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[Anathem]]'': The Geometers/Cousins, in a roundabout way. Their actual goals are way too complicated to cram into a small example.
* [[Elliot S! Maggin]]'s novel ''[[Superman]]: [[Last Son of Krypton]]'' includes a scene in which [[Lex Luthor]] explains why so many aliens want to conquer the Earth. If you take over Earth you get six billion Earthlings to use as soldiers—so you can then conquer all the ''other'' planets in the Galaxy because [[Humans Are
* The free worlds of the galaxy are menaced by hordes of these in Olaf Stapledon's ''Starmaker,'' a novel that was written in 1936, [[Those Wacky Nazis|so you can probably guess who the "United Empires" were a metaphor for...]] This use of the trope made rather more sense than most, since the Empires were motivated by a desire to spread their deeply unpleasant militaristic culture, not plundering resources as such.
* ''[http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/the-fermi-paradox-is-our-business-model The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model]'', a short story by Charlie Jane Anders, offers an interesting and unusual, yet chillingly ''extreme'', example.
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*** The Sontarans also do this, as it's very easy to turn Earth into a breeding planet for their species. How easy? {{spoiler|They even get the humans to install ATMOS systems on their vehicles, which are designed to wipe out humans and prepare the atmosphere.}}
** In "Horror of Fang Rock", the Rutans (eternal enemies of the Sontarans) mention that Earth is valuable because it is strategically placed, rather than anything on the planet. This explanation is as good as any until we get to the subject of all those other rocks that are pretty much in the same place but put up less of a fight.
* 1983's ''[[V (TV series)|V]]'', as well as the sequel miniseries ''The Final Battle'' and eventually ''The Series'', had aliens not only intent on strip-mining the planet (of water), but considered humanity as a food resource (along with small birds and rodents). The [[Novelization]] makes a rather worthy attempt to [[Justified Trope|justify]] it - it's not so much plain water and food they are after, but ''relatively pure'' water and ''meat''; in their experience, all civilizations [[Green Aesop|pollute their worlds irreversibly]] in the process of developing interstellar travel, and recycling technologies have trouble efficiently supporting millions, let alone billions of people. Starfaring civilizations are thus constantly warring over what little clean water and produce remains. When the "Visitors" discovered a life-sustaining world that had not yet developed even basic spaceflight... well, OM NOM NOM NOM.
* The Goa'uld from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' ''already'' did it to Earth thousands of years ago—to acquire humans as slaves and hosts, as well as resource wealth—then subsequently lost control of the planet in a revolt.
** The [[Human Aliens|Aschen]] are worse about this. They're strong enough to fight off the Goa'uld and often use it as a pretext to begin the covert process of turning populated worlds into giant farming fields with a fraction of the original population via the use of sterility viruses. This also serves to eliminate any potential competitor.
* The Wraith, in ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', are constantly trying to get to Earth—because all the Hives are awake now, and the carefully-managed and tiny populations of humanoid life in the Pegasus galaxy are too scattered. A single world filled with six billion people, and hundreds if not thousands of other worlds also heavily populated with humans, Jaffa, and others, just makes it all the more appetizing.
* Emperor Gruumm from ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]''. {{spoiler|It's eventually revealed that his agenda is to use the resources of the planets he conquers to construct a new body for Omni, the true [[Big Bad]].}}
== Radio Series ==
* The ''[[Kenny Everett|Captain Kremmen]]'' radio show. The evil Thargoids raid other planets for their best brains, drain them for their knowledge, then destroy the planet.
== Tabletop Games ==
* The Dark Eldar from ''[[Warhammer
** To a lesser extent, the regular Eldar before the fall. One codex mentions them doing things like stealing other species' suns for no discernible reason.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[PS238]]'' examines and [[
* Subverted in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]''. Upon finally getting their [[Wave Motion Gun|ultimate weapon]] working on Earth, the [[Space Pirates|Pirates of Ipecac]] are anxious to start pillaging.. and are nonplussed to realize Earth doesn't have much worth stealing. They decide to look around for ''something'' to swipe, and failing that, to just shoot the place up anyway (although Earth did have a resource they needed for their ultimate weapon: ''caramel'').
== Western Animation ==
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** Only one planet? It was used at least twice: one for Dark Matter, another for ice. Both imploded.
*** I think the object they mined all the ice from was Halley's Comet; not sure if it imploded or not, but the trope remains.
* Futurama did this again, using a whole race of [[Justice League (animation)|Braniac-like]] floating-brain aliens, dedicated to learning everything in the universe, turning all sentient life into morons, and then destroying it.
* An episode of ''[[Superfriends]]'' featured lion-like aliens who were plotting to chop the Earth into chunks, which would then be sold to various other races (all wanting different things, iron, water, etc.). Of course, the Super Friends have a little problem with this kind of entrepreneurship...
* An episode of ''[[Mighty Max]]'' features aliens who invade Earth to steal its toxic waste, which apparently they can use for beneficial methods. When Max eventually figures that out, he pretends to surrender and agrees that Earth will give them a periodic tribute, figuring that it makes no sense to fight over something humans don't even want anyway.
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[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:
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