History Main / BugWar

** Mosquito-transmitted diseases during the construction of the Panama canal led to thousands of deaths, ended by the mass pesticide spraying of their breeding grounds.

[[folder:Comicbooks]]

* Marvel's ComicBook/{{Annihilation}} [[CrisisCrossover event]].

* The Blue of ''BlueGender''.

* The Skrugg from ''{{Heroman}}''

* EntomorphPlagueOfTheDarkfall is another example in a fantasy setting. Unlike most examples, the different species of insect each has their own territory and internal politics with one another. [[spoiler:The Main character eventually must become an insect creature himself to fight them.]]

* ''{{Starflight}}'' series -- Somewhat averted: the Veloxi are not very nasty to anyone, but they do charge tolls for flying through their space. Not paying the toll obviously results in a hostile encounter. They also dislike you removing artifacts from planets in their space and not handing them back over. However, that is not what qualifies the aversion. The fact they are in possession of world-destroying bombs they revere as godly artifacts is. Kind of makes you wonder how this even began. They will beat the crap out of you for being bad at maths, as six is a sacred number to them, and their security measures are programmed with this in mind.

* Several episodes of ''TheOuterLimits'' played this straight, but the episode "Hearts and Minds" [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] it by having the "bugs" turn out to be humans from a rival corporation; the soldiers had been [[BrainwashedAndCrazy drugged to see the enemy as disgusting aliens]] so that they would [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman feel fewer qualms]] about killing them.
** The soldiers from the rival corporation were similarly drugged.

* The core of ''Prince Blueblood: Hero of Equestria'' is the Equestrian Royal Guard vs. the parasitic, ShapeShifting InsectoidAlien Changelings. The Prince's sword is in fact, specifically built to puncture chitin.

* This is the premise of ''VideoGame/ProPinballTheWeb'', where the Dark Queen wants to TakeOverTheWorld by unleashing an army of spiders.

* ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' has the SpacePirates, which almost all resemble insects (to varying degrees, depending on the game), and their society and habits described in the ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' series is often compared to that of insects. To be entirely fair to the franchise, though, it predates many of the examples listed on this page.
** Technically, the insectoid nature of the Pirates wasn't established until ''Super Metroid''; before, they were never seen.

* ''Those From Nowhere'' - In French, ''Ceux de nulle part'' written by Francis Carsac [[hottip:*:an alias of François Bordes, a prominent figure of paleontology]]. The book twice subverts the trope. First, the human protagonist makes contact with a race of [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Green skinned]] [[OurElvesAreBetter space elves]] (the Hiss) that is fighting a losing war against the "Misliks", metallic bugs who can [[SpaceIsCold only exist in absolute zero]] and are therefore [[ApocalypseHow extinguishing every star in the whole universe]]. When the protagonist manages to make telepathic contact with a Mislik "war prisoner", it appears that he cannot understand any part of the Mislik's mind except its feelings: basically, the bug does not understand what one + one = two means, but it ''feels'' sad, alone, and frightened because it is far away from its kin. The second subversion comes from the fact that the green aliens have founded a "league of human worlds": basically, for them, the concept of humanity covers any intelligent species who would rather live under a star than in a frozen universe: so, if you happen to be a giant spider who enjoys the warmth of your homeworld sun, congratulations, you are "human". Actually, the Hiss would probably consider anything to be "human" enough to be worthy of an alliance proposal, so, in order to fight bugs with emotions but a strong dislike of sunlight, the Hiss are ready to form alliances with other bugs who are ''not'' offended by sunlight. The book predates ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' by five years.

* ''Series/SpaceAboveAndBeyond''.

* ''LostPlanet'' has the ferocious Akrid, whom range from tiny fliers to massive worms and EldritchAbominations. They were strong enough to completely ruin mankind's first colonization attempt on their native planet, which eventually led to the wars seen in the main story of ''Extreme Condition''.

* ''Anime/TekkamanBlade'' has the Radam, giant vaguely-instectoid aliens, as the main antagonists. Their life-cycle is rather bizarre, as they turn into strange alien trees once on the surface, and utilize {{Puppeteer Parasite}}s to control members of indigenous/victimized races for field commanders.

* ''Anime/TekkamanBlade'' has the Radam, giant vaguely-instectoid aliens, as the main antagonists. Their life-cycle is rather bizarre, as they turn into strange alien trees once on the surface.

* Ant-colony-on-ant-colony wars happen all the time, complete with raids and the taking of slaves!
* On Earth, insects are one of the most successful species on earth, being made up of an estimated six to ten million species, making up between half and 90% of the entire animal kingdom, and living in nearly every environment on the planet.

* The Discovery channels, mostly Science Channel and Animal Planet have "Killer Bug Wars" documenting real life insect vs insect wars.

Note that, technically most of these examples do not involve bugs, as a true bug is defined as "An insect of the order Hemiptera."

* The original BugWar movie (and the other notable source for ''Aliens''): the giant ants of ''Film/{{Them}}''

* The ''[[Literature/TowerAndTheHive Rowan]]'' series by AnneMcCaffrey involves a BugWar fought with PsychicPowers.

* The Insects in AndreyLivadny's ''TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' series are human-sized upright-walking, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin insects]] who achieve a unique form of a HiveMind via their natural PsychicPowers. While each Insect is sentient, the hive can mentally "de-evolve" any number of Insects to drone-like level when an army or a large workforce is required. This ability also influenced their science and technology. Due to the cheap workforce, they never had to develop cybernetic organisms and, thus, have no HumongousMecha or androids. While there has only been one actual BugWar (on a LostColony between human and Insect descendants of the original colonists), several novels involve conflicts between humans and Insects with hints that one is inevitable. Unfortunately for humanity, the Insects far outnumber humans (and "de-evolved" drones don't value their lives), and several hives are attempting to learn how to use human cybernetics against them. Fortunately, humans far outclass the Insects in space and ground combat in the technological capacity.

* Averted in SergeyLukyanenko's ''{{Genome}}'' with the Czygu, whose females could, at first glance, pass for small human girls. Only by looking closer you will find that they're BeePeople and that the "breasts" are actually pseudopodi. This can allow Czygu, with some minor plastic surgery, to infiltrate humanity. While there is no BugWar in the book, one is about to start, if the protagonist doesn't solve the murder mystery in time.

* ''TechInfantry'' was inspired by ''Armor'' and ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'', so of course it has an endless BugWar against insectoid aliens based upon, but even scarier and more powerful than those in ''Literature/StarshipTroopers''.
* One of the many, '''many''' conflicts that the Imperium of Man of ''[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Warhammer 40K]]'' infamy is embroiled in is a constant galaxy-wide BugWar with the Tyranids, a planet-eating HordeOfAlienLocusts who appear be biologically engineered, with some traits of now extinct species, suggesting they assimilate traits from devoured biomass.

* The conflict between the Terrans and the Zerg in the {{RTS}} game ''StarCraft'' is a classic BugWar.

* Spoofed in the ''{{Futurama}}'' episode ''War is the H-Word'', where the enemy is a [[StarfishAliens race of bouncing balls]]. The episode ''Three Hundred Big Boys'' takes place after a BugWar against a planet of [[GiantSpider giant spiders]], with the resulting surplus being distributed among the populace. A planet of (presumably) [[AvertedTrope peaceful giant spiders]].

* Watch any episode of ''Monsters Inside Me'', and you'll realize that the human species has '''always''' been engaged in a BugWar (and a Worm War, and a Protozoan War): it's just being fought on a microscopic scale, so it isn't as photogenic.

!!Examples:

[[folder:Films]]

* Played with in ''BattleLosAngeles'', where the aliens are [[StarfishAliens very clearly inhuman]] and brutally ruthless, but retain enough humanlike characteristics (such as caring for wounded, taking cover, using intelligent tactics and hand signals, etc.) that the [[NotSoDifferent similarities between them and the Marines]] becomes disturbingly apparent. At one point, one of the Marines asks another if he thinks the aliens were like them: just grunts who really had no idea what was going on, but given orders and sent to fight.
* ''WreckItRalph'' has the game Hero's Duty, which has [[SpaceMarine Space Marines]] fighting robot bugs called Cy-Bugs. The bugs here are mindless automata unlike most video game characters in the setting and only exist to eat and multiply. Yet they are usually stopped by a giant glowing tower that acts as a bug zapper.

* Z from ''WesternAnimation/{{Antz}}'' survived a war with termites. While the ant characters, especially their faces are highly anthropomorphic, bordering on PettingZooPeople, the termites are completely non-anthropomorphized.

* The Gohma from ''VideoGame/AsurasWrath'' has similar monsters to the space monsters above, at least the space faring ones. Played with in that a lot of the other members of The Gohma also consist of Monkey,s flying squid qnd lion fish, elephants, turtles, a King Kobra[=/=]Turtle Hybrid, and even SpaceSquid, yet there's not a bug to be found.

** In ''SG-1'', the Replicators are first introduced as an insectoid techno-organic HiveMind that have nearly overwhelmed [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien the Asgard]]. Being made up of a sort of alien legos, they aren't particularly chitinous or drooling, but they are as implacable and tenacious as anything else on this page. Their default form looks like a large spider. Later in the series they develop humanoid variants, but still use insectoid forms for most combat and work.

* The primary enemy of the second ''{{Spellsinger}}'' book, ''The Hour at the Gate'', are the Plated Folk, insectoid invaders. Given this is a world of anthropomorphic mammals and birds, the insect invaders are seen as truly horrible, although that doesn't stop the heroes from allying with the Spinners, giant sentient spiders.

* ''Film/{{District 9}}'' - The violent insectoid aliens seem at first to be mindless beasts. As the film develops we get to see how their circumstances are working against them. Through the character of Christopher an his child we gain a sympathetic viewpoint. It is an interesting exercise to view the film with and without subtitles: it shows how characters lacking a mammalian face are working uphill.

* Subverted in Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''HumanxCommonwealth'' series, where humans allied with the Thranx. Thranx are insectile -- they have an exoskeleton, eight limbs. They are, in essence, good guys. Human ally with the Thranx a against an evil species that looks perfectly human, and a highly humanoid reptilian species. Although humans did have some instinctive abhorrence about allying with the buglike Thranx, to their surprise they find more "human" decency in the bugs than the humanoids.

* ''MassEffect'' has the Rachni War. Unlike many examples, the morality of wiping them all out because they're insects is in doubt - the rachni were intelligent enough to build spacecraft, after all - and later on you get the opportunity to [[GenocideDilemma choose to save or kill]] [[LastOfHisKind the surviving]] [[HiveQueen rachni queen]].
** Furthermore, it's revealed that the rachni fought the war [[BrainwashedAndCrazy because Sovereign compelled them to]], using a "sour note from space" (basically, he indoctrinated them). In fact, if you save the queen, she'll promise in [[MassEffect2 the second game]] to aid you against the Reapers.
*** However, in ''MassEffect3'', [[spoiler:the queen ends up being captured by the Reapers, who turn her children into [[OurZombiesAreDifferent husks]]; you'll have to save her again before she can make good on her promise]].
** If you didn't save the queen in ''MassEffect1'', [[spoiler:the Reapers will simply construct an artificial queen in order to produce rachni that can be converted into husks; unlike her natural-born counterpart, she's thoroughly indoctrinated and will sabotage the war effort if you choose to spare her.]]