History Main / PlanetLooters

* This is how corporations in ''Fallen Dragon'' recoup the massive investments required to build a colony: After the colony has had time to terraform, grow and actually start producing something, the corporation shows up with a well-armed fleet in orbit and start demanding dividends.

* Subverted like almost every other "Evil Alien Invader" trope in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', where humans are the planet looters. They mined out one planet to the point of implosion, then refused to help the wildlife because of "Brannigan's Law" -- a parody of ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s [[{{Alien Non-Interference Clause}} Prime Directive]] which bans such "interference" (but apparently not the mining). They also mined Haley's Comet for ice until not enough was left to combat Global Warming this time.

* Subverted in ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob''. Upon finally getting their [[WaveMotionGun ultimate weapon]] working on Earth, the [[SpacePirates 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'').

* ''{{PS238}}'' examines and {{lampshades}} this trope (along with AlienInvasion); Herschel [[http://ps238.nodwick.com/?p=192 explicitly points out]] that the only reason why any aliens would choose to invade a world would be if the planet contained ''something'' that can't be found anywhere else. Raw materials are far more efficiently gained by mining asteroids, planetoids, moons, and other celestial bodies without an atmosphere, high gravity and a local population. The Earth is invaded by a species of planet looters later, however: [[spoiler:The aliens, for whatever reason, cannot breed on their own and unleash a bio-plague on the planet intended to rewrite all human DNA and turn all following generations of humans into their species.]]

* The motive behind the Cardassian's expansionist, militarised society seen in ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. One Cardassian claimed that they were once a spiritual and peaceful people, but their native solar system is so mineral poor that it was either this or literally have their species starve to death. Their occupation of Bajor in which they enslaved the planet's citizens and strip-mined many of the planet's resources is the catalyst for a lot of the backstory and worldbuilding for Deep Space Nine's earlier seasons and its effects are felt right up until the final episode.

* Subverted in DougalDixon's ''Man After Man'':[[spoiler: the invaders in the end are ''humanity's descendants'', which recolonized the Earth after re-engineering themselves beyond recognition for life on distant worlds, which they've also stripped of their resources]]. Guess what happens afterwards.

* OlderThanTelevision: The UrExample is ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'', by HGWells, 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 Creator/JulesVerne 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.

* Seriously explored, and eventually subverted, in HBeamPiper'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).

* "The Remarkable Fidgety River", an episode of ''DoctorSnuggles'' written by DouglasAdams, featured aliens stealing the Earth's water. They thought we didn't want the water, because we throw all our rubbish into it.

* Creator/ElliotSMaggin's novel ''Franchise/{{Superman}}: LastSonOfKrypton'' includes a scene in which SelfDemonstrating/LexLuthor 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 HumansAreBastards.

* Arguably, Medical Mechanica from ''{{FLCL}}'' fits this category.

** 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.

To {{Handwave}} that problem, they often need some particular resource which is supposedly rare. 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.

* Franchise/{{Superman}} villain {{Brainiac}}, who steals a city from every planet he visits, as a sample of the civiliastion, before downloading all the information a planet has, then destroying the planet.

** In the Marvel comics they can use any energy, Energon is just much better for them. The Decepticons, however, see this as "just oil." Makes sense, since all their Earth-based alt-modes run on oil-based fuels. Too bad their main base is made out of a nuclear power plant, which would have powered them better than oil, and yes the humans do point this out.

* In ''SwordOfTheStars'', the Zuul use the resources of their worlds at an unsustainably high rate, called "overharvesting". While all races can do this, it is only compulsory for the Zuul. According to AllThereInTheManual, however, the Zuul's greatest pillaging goal is slaves: Zuul use other races' bodies for food and manual labour, and their minds for technological advance and other... [[MindRape Recreation]].

* Inverted (perhaps deliberately) in Creator/CSLewis' ''OutOfTheSilentPlanet'', 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.

* ''Captain Kremmen'' radio show. The evil Thargoids raid other planets for their best brains, drain them for their knowledge, then destroy the planet.

* Subverted like almost every other "Evil Alien Invader" trope in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', where humans are the planet looters. They mined out one planet to the point of implosion, then refused to help the wildlife because of "Brannigan's Law" -- a parody of ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s [[{{Alien Non-Interference Clause}} Prime Directive]] which bans such "interference" (but apparently not the mining).
** 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.

* ''Film/CowboysAndAliens'' reveals that the aliens are on Earth to mine ''gold''. It's not entirely clear why they need gold, but they have no problem destroying entire planetary civilizations to do that. [[spoiler:They have already destroyed at least one other civilization]].
** To be fair, gold IS a fantastic conductor of electricity.

* The Kaijuu that attacks humanity in ''PacificRim''? [[spoiler:Their job was getting rid of the "vermin" - humans - so their creators can take Earth's resources before moving on to the next planet.]]

* ElliotSMaggin's novel ''{{Superman}}: LastSonOfKrypton'' includes a scene in which LexLuthor 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 HumansAreBastards.

* The Horde from ''StrikeforceMorituri''. 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 ''CalvinAndHobbes'' 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.
* {{Superman}} villain {{Brainiac}}, who steals a city from every planet he visits, as a sample of the civiliastion, before downloading all the information a planet has, then destroying the planet.