History Main / PlanetLooters

* In Creator/AndreNorton's ''Storm Over Literature/{{Warlock}}'', the Throg may have destroyed their home planet and now live as raiders, exterminating wherever they find people and living off the loot.

* Seriously explored, and eventually subverted, in Creator/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).

* A humorous short story by R.A. Lafferty called "Land of the Great Horses" pretends that the UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} are nomadic because extraterrestrials ''took their homeland'' (ripped it loose, apparently, right down to the bedrock). They weren't actually looters, though, but ''scientists'' who took it for geological examination, instilling a compulsion to wander so the Romani wouldn't settle anywhere else. When the aliens bring the land back in the late 20th Century, everyone with a significant degree of Romani blood feels impelled to return to India. "It's come back, you know." An epilogue reveals that the extraterrestrials sampled UsefulNotes/LosAngeles next -- and haven't brought it back yet three centuries or so later.

* The Diamond Authority in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' colonizes planets and pillages them for badly needed resources to make more Gems. By the series' present, this strategy seems to be facing diminishing returns and the next generation of Gems are weaker than those that came before. This makes it all the more glaring that [[spoiler:Yellow Diamond wants the Earth destroyed. She knows it's lush with resources, but she's putting RevengeBeforeReason and wants it destroyed for all the trouble the Crystal Gems have given her, including causing the death of Pink Diamond.]]

* 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]]. And they obtain them by raiding other species colonies, or colonizing a planet whose civilian population partially survived the OrbitalBombardment.

* StephenBaxter uses Planet Looters in ''ManifoldSpace'', 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 Vasari from ''SinsOfASolarEmpire'' have built their whole culture around this. They've been fleeing some threat for ten thousand years, stopping only to strip worlds of materials to build new ships and fuels for the next leg of their journey. The problem arises when they arrive in human space; they loot both the uninhabitable planets and those colonized by humans.

->"''They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet, their entire civilization. Once they consume every natural resource, they move on.''"

* The space vampires from ''film/{{Lifeforce}} come to Earth to harvest the eponymous [[LifeEnergy life force]] from humans to power up their EldritchStarship. They have been doing this since ancient time, hiding within the tail of Halley's comet, to the point that's theorized within the film that their past visits [[DoingInTheWizard gave birth to the legends of modern vampires]].

* Inverted in ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'', [[spoiler:where, due to the severe damage suffered by the Frontier fleet, and the dwindling resources (it's stated that they will last for two or three months maximum), the government decides to attack the Vajra homeworld and break through the Vajra defenses, hoping to colonize it. At one point, one of Alto's wingmen deliberately comments "This planet is ours!" while blasting away at the local inhabitants.]]

* The Diamond Authority in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' colonizes planets and pillages them for badly needed resources to make more Gems. Which is why it's unusual [[spoiler: that Yellow Diamond wants the Earth destroyed. She knows it's lush with resources, but she's putting RevengeBeforeReason and wants it destroyed for all the trouble the Crystal Gems have given her, including causing the death of Pink Diamond.]]

* StephenHawking believes that these would be the only aliens who would ever visit Earth. After all, this is what humans have been doing to each other's countries: colonization.

* For unexplained reasons (but given the demeanor of President Skroob, most likely government mismanagement), the denizens of planet Spaceball, from the Mel Brooks sci-fi spoof ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'', must steal air from other planets to supply their world's thinning atmosphere.

* The Vagaari from ''OutboundFlight'' are a nomadic people whose most important resource is slaves from less technologically-advanced peoples. Not only are slaves useful for working and [[TestedOnHumans testing]], but they can also be put into those clear bubble structures on the outsides of the ships. That way, the people they fight [[HumanShield are reluctant to fire and kill innocent captives]]. Unless, that is, [[ShootTheDog they make an enemy of Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo]]...

* ''Series/{{V 1983}}'', as well as the sequel miniseries ''The Final Battle'' and eventually ''The Series'' were specifically a case of MarsNeedsWater, though Earth's massive reserves of animal protein(QED [[ImAHumanitarian humans]]) were a definite bonus.

* ''Series/{{V 1983}}'', 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 worthy attempt to [[JustifiedTrope 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 [[GreenAesop 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.

** Likewise in ''VideoGame/Starbound''. In fact, this is the best way to collect fuel from moons: run along the surface, dig up any easily accessible fuel, then teleport out [[RubberBandAI before the fuel-guarding monster catches up]]. But in general, exploring and looting planets for raw materials and unusual parts is a major part of the gameplay.

* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' features a few of these among it's original villains: The Ze Balmary Empire of ''VideoGame/ShinSuperRobotWars'' and the ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsAlpha'' series seeks to turn Earth's population into mind-slave soldiers, the Ruina in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsDestiny'' looks to use humans as cattle, the Fury in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsJudgment'' want to eradicate humanity and use the planet as their new home, while the Database in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsW'' take the Brainiac route.

* 1983's ''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 worthy attempt to [[JustifiedTrope 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 [[GreenAesop 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.

* In ''Film/MenInBlack II'', a criminal alien releases one of her old partners in crime from TheMenInBlack's prisons. This convict's crime was that he tried to steal the Earth's ozone layer.

* In ''TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'', the reason why Megatron and [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn Sentinel Prime]] want to pull Cybertron into Earth's atmosphere is to use its inhabitants as slave labor in its reconstruction]]. [[FridgeLogic This would probably destroy Earth]], [[FridgeBrilliance but why would the Decepticons care?]]

* In the ''GauntsGhosts'' novel ''His Last Command'' we are told that Chaos uses jehgenesh, massive warp beasts, to strip resources from worlds closer to the front for backline worlds.

* The Angel Cartel and Serpentis in ''EveOnline'' are interplanetary [[TheSyndicate syndicates]]. They don't explicitly loot, just [[ShameIfSomethingHappened "protect"]]. Also, the Amarr Empire used to organize slaver raids against Minmatar planets. In the Incursion ExpansionPack, Sansha's Nation restarts it's own [[HumanResources "recruiting drive"]].
* ''EccoTheDolphin'' kicks off with the title character's entire family being swallowed up by a typhoon that sucks everything from the sea and seafloor, including seashells and rocks. Ecco eventually discovers these storms are caused by a nightmarish alien species called the Vortex that uses Ecco's homeplanet as food source every 500 years, since they've lost their own ability to produce food.

** Interestingly, despite viewing all other races as potential slaves, if they admit anyone to speak to their leader, they do not want to hear words like "beg" (e.g. I beg of you). Begging is for slaves, not those who have been shown the courtesy of being treated as more than slaves must not beg.

* {{Inverted}} in ''{{Albion}}'': You start out as a shuttle pilot on a giant strip-mining-colony ship from Earth that's on its way to extract all valuable raw materials from a planet that turns out to be inhabited...

** The Evronians being DangerouslyGenreSavvy, they ''do'' keep breeding populations alive. The real problem is that there's not even close to enough subjects to feed all of them... And that's why they slowly start getting fixated with Earth: [[HumansAreSpecial Earthlings are so emotionally rich it often takes more than one shot to drain them, and if not completely drained they recover]] [[BlessedWithSuck and can be hit again and again indefinitely]].