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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"''...a kind of giant space-going shark, a moving appetite, a vast, fast, terrible eating-machine which saw its purpose to be turning everything edible in the universe into shark shit.''"
|'''[[Spider Robinson]]''', ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon|Callahan's Secret]]''}}
{{quote|"''You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. ... I admire its ''purity''. A survivor ... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.''"
▲{{quote|"''...a kind of giant space-going shark, a moving appetite, a vast, fast, terrible eating-machine which saw its purpose to be turning everything edible in the universe into shark shit.''"|'''[[Spider Robinson]]''', ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon|Callahan's Secret]]''}}
|'''Ash''', ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]''}}
The alien horde approaches. They don't necessarily want to give us a [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong]], or be [[The Virus]] and transform us, or what all... they're just into adding biomass by whatever means necessary and as fast as possible.
▲{{quote|"''You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. ... I admire its ''purity''. A survivor ... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.''"|'''Ash''', ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]''}}
▲The alien horde approaches. They don't necessarily want to give us a [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong]], or be [[The Virus]] and transform us, or what all... they're just into adding biomass by whatever means necessary and as fast as possible.
Because the only purpose they have in life, the be-all and end-all of their existence, is the conversion of all organic matter in the universe into more of them. They don't do diplomacy, because you don't bargain with lunch. This is, of course, always cause for a [[Bug War]].
Most Locust Hordes use, or ''are'', [[Organic Technology]]. However, [[Nanomachines]] can also become a
Compare [[To Serve Man]] and the slightly less extreme (as in, they ''are'' intelligent and only want inorganic resources) [[Planet Looters]], and do not confuse them with [[Insectoid Aliens]], who may or may not be this trope.
▲Compare [[To Serve Man]] and the slightly less extreme (as in, they ''are'' intelligent and only want inorganic resources) [[Planet Looters]], and do not confuse them with [[Insectoid Aliens]], who may or may not be this trope. [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] is a common way to set up a [[Guilt-Free Extermination War]], since it's a fight between a group that wants to eat everything and the groups that don't want to be eaten. Not necessarily related to [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]]. Related to [[The Swarm]]
{{examples}}
▲== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==
* In the manga version of ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'', demons' bodies are built out of "legion", much like humans with cells, but they have the power to rebuild themselves to [[Good Thing You Can Heal|regenerate wounds]]. However, when {{spoiler|Aion}} corrupts the legion, they are {{spoiler|released into Earth's atmosphere and begin to eat away at humans. Aion's plan is to "rebuild" the world by using the legion in this way to destroy all life as we know it. He also}} says that those with a "strong will" can control the legion, which for them turns the legion into something more like [[The Virus]].
* The Vajra from ''[[Macross Frontier]]''. Subverted in that {{spoiler|it turns out that they're not out to destroy the Frontier fleet, but rather on a misunderstood rescue mission since they see Ranka and (to an extent Sheryl) as one of their own owing to the fact that she can communicate via fold waves through her singing.}} {{spoiler|The whole image of a
* ''[[Vandread]]'' has this for the Human Race of Earth, who kill entire planets of people that have colonized elsewhere so they can harvest them for their organs.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The ''Org of PLASM'' (italics and caps in the original) featured in [[Jim Shooter]]'s short-lived [[Defiant Comics]] was a world-sized organism that had to feed to remain healthy. Its natives, the Plasmoids, used organic spacefleets to conquer other worlds and mulch their ecosystems into "gore for the Org."
* An issue of ''[[Ms. Marvel]]'' features her fighting a dimension-hopping sorcerer. He intends to maroon her on an alternate Earth where a
* The [[Ultimate Marvel]] version of Galactus combines this trope with [[Planet Eater]].
* [[Marvel Zombies]] turns the ''protagonists'' into this.
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* The ''[[Space Ghost]]'' comic miniseries has Zorak as the leader of a planet-ravaging horde of man-sized alien mantis'.
== [[Fan
* A fanfiction example in Brian Randall's [http://florestica.com/brandall/poe/index.htm Process of Elimination]. Aforementioned horde is original flavor, and pretty imaginative. It's a Ranma 1/2 fiction.
** Well, ''[[Ranma ½]]'', ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'', and a dozen other anime series.
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== [[Film]] ==
* The Xenomorphs (the titular creatures) from the ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' films.
* The swarm of metal locusts which Gort transforms into halfway through [[The Remake]] of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]''.
* The invading aliens in ''[[Independence Day]]'' were either these or [[Planet Looters]].
** Given that President Whitmore was temporarily telepathically linked with the aliens, I'd take his word for it:
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Moties in ''[[The Mote in God's Eye]]''.
* The Dreen from [[John Ringo]]'s ''[[Into the Looking Glass]]'' novels
* The Posleen from [[John Ringo]]'s ''[[Posleen War Series|Legacy of the Aldenata]]'' series.
* The Probes from ''Von Neumann's War'', by Travis S. Taylor and [[John Ringo]]. Ringo seems to like this trope.
* The Swarm Mother from the ''[[Wild Cards]]'' shared-world anthologies
* The Chtorran ecosystem from David Gerrold's ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]''
* The Black Mass from the ''[[Star Trek: New Frontier]]'' book series
* Slight variation used in the second of the [[Thursday Next]] series by [[Jasper Fforde]], ''Lost In A Good Book:'' Thursday's time-traveling father discovers a glitch in the timeline that, if it comes to pass, will result in all organic matter on Earth being reduced to a strange and sinister pink goo. It turns out to be {{spoiler|the result of nanomachines designed to convert inedible matter into food, only the nanomachines take over the planet. And turn us all into strawberry-flavored ice cream topping.}}
* The Arachnid Omnivoracity from ''[[Starfire]]''. Tabletop game and series of books co-written by David Weber.
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* The Hivers from [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s [[Tower and The Hive|Talents]] series.
** Also the Khleevi from her ''[[Acorna]]'' series.
*** Don't forget Thread from [[Dragonriders of Pern]].
* Greenfly, in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''[[Revelation Space]]'' 'verse, fall under the green goo variety.
* The Primes from [[Peter F. Hamilton|Peter F Hamilton's]] ''[[Commonwealth Saga]]''.
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* The Slaver Sunflowers. from [[Larry Niven]]'s [[Known Space]], are a vegetable version. They exist to turn all other life into fertilizer for themselves.
* The Unclean from the ''[[Star Trek]]'' series "Invasion!". They need three things: warp cores, for energy; new DNA, to re-engineer themselves into useful forms; and BRAAAINS, for intelligence. ([[Fridge Logic|Why can't they just grow their own?]])
* The Vord of the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' are a [[Captain Ersatz]] of the [[
** They start out that way, but by the end they have developed a willingness to use human slaves while still alive, if they can be reliably mind controlled, instead of just as food or after snatching their bodies. The queen even offers to let some humans surrender and she keeps them to play house with.
*** Though this is part of the fact that the Vord Queen is essentially defective. She is too human and her eccentricity is viewed as a critical flaw by all her daughter queens who quickly decide that she needs to be eliminated. Its actually part of the Vord programming as it were that their primary objective is to maintain their purity and singularity.
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* The Nesk in ''[[Animorphs]]'' in ''In The Time of Dinosaurs''.
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The [[Stargate Verse]] has Replicators, which are [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]] (at least, until the Asurans of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' start getting called by the same name. While they ''work'' exactly like the Replicators, their goal isn't "tear stuff up to make more.")
* ''[[Lexx]]'' had Mantrid's drones, little helper robots that he ''deliberately'' turned into a locust horde after he became fused with a member of an alien race that wanted to destroy all humans. Lexx being [[Crapsack World|what it is]], ''he succeeds'' in turning the overwhelming majority of the universe's matter into drones. {{spoiler|So many that he was [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: using ''almost all the universe's matter'' against the Lexx made gravity a problem and resulted in a Big Crunch (or "Big Collapse," as Kai called it.)}} After the Mantrid arc is over, the opening narration is removed because it calls the Lexx the most powerful weapon in the two universes - and ''there aren't two universes anymore.''
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* The Stingray creatures in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' 2009 Easter Special "Planet of the Dead".
** Also, the Rachnoss, a reborn-from-near-extinction species that the Doctor murders in their crib in "The Runaway Bride", mainly because there is no way to talk them out of their instinct to consume the Earth and other planets, at least not while they are still children.
** In a way, this trope also fits the Daleks, except for them it's not so much instinct and hunger, but a deliberate choice. (Well, insofar as a species genetically designed to hate everything else has a "choice".) Their modus operandi is to exterminate other species, and then use their biomass and resources to make more Daleks, in order to exterminate more.
*** I think the aliens you are looking for here is "the Cybermen."
* The Magog from ''[[Andromeda]]''.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The Tyranid Hive Fleets of ''[[Warhammer
** And it's implied that the Tyranids are running from
*** Universe's biggest flyswatter?
*** It might have something to do with the [[Our Zombies Are Different|Necrons]], as it's implied that Tyranids make a point of staying far away from Necron tomb-worlds. It would make sense when you consider that Tyranids and Necrons are polar opposites: the Tyranids exist to continually grow and expand until they're the only living things left, while the Necrons exist only to exterminate every single living thing for their [[Eldritch Abomination|C'tan]] masters.
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* The Planet Eaters from ''[[Monsterpocalypse]]'', as their name implies. The Savage Swarm aren't aliens, but they are [[Big Creepy-Crawlies]] with insatiable appeties.
* The RPG ''Nightbane'' had Shadow Mantis/Locust which rather unsurprisingly are exactly this, except they eat inorganic material as well and are mostly wiped out nowdays.
* 2nd Edition [[Dungeons
** The Horde, which are an elemental (and Lawful Evil, ironically) race of insects which vary in size and shape from horde to horde, with all members of a particular horde being identical (i.e., sometimes they will appear as 20
** ''[[Spelljammer]]'' introduced the Witchlight Marauders - a multi-staged sequential bioweapon made by the Orcs during the Unhuman Wars for [[Kill'Em All|completely devastating entire Elven worlds]] via consumption and ultraviolence. After they kill every living thing on the planet they then turn on themselves.
*** The Clockwork Horrors, a [[Mechanical Lifeform]] gone [[
** There was some fungus from Abyss that gradually eats everything. An attempt to get rid a world of the infestation destroying it by banishing all fungus to the plane of Vacuum only made it mutate further into Egarus - which is said to devour the existence as such: anything and anyone that was left close to it for too long simply vanishes.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The Kha'ak in the ''[[X (video game)|X]]-Universe'' games. The [[
* The Zerg from ''[[
* Smoke's ending in ''[[Mortal Kombat]] Armageddon'' has him fusing with his fellow Cyberninjas Sektor and Cyrax and doing the Nanomachine version of this.
* The Flood from the ''[[Halo]]'' series are somewhere between Alien Locusts and [[The Virus]].
** The Drones probably qualify as well. If what they did to the New Mombassa tunnel system is any indication, they could probably rival in the Flood in numbers and environmental damage if allowed to run rampant.
* The Frythans in ''[[Seven Kingdoms]]'' even gain one of their primary resources, [[Life Points]], mostly by killing enemies, and it's required to breed more.
* The Vortex and Foe of ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]'', though with the Vortex it's more explicit.
* One of the dreams of Mantis from ''[[Conquest: Frontier Wars]]'' is to 'Mush terrans into a milky white paste and dance over the earth drunk on their liquefied corpses.'
* The Strogg from the ''[[Quake]]'' series. On a couple of occasions, you get to see the [[Squick|inside of their factories.]]
* ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' gave us the Metal Heads, who are a horde of alien locust/mammal/reptile things varying from small but rapid scorpion-things to colossal juggernauts that are [[Made of Iron|nearly impossible to kill]]. While it isn't absolutely clear what their long-term goals are (or, for that matter, even if they ''have'' long-term goals), their rapacious swarming over everything within areas not heavily shielded and devoid of a handy [[One-Man Army]] puts them squarely within this trope.
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* The titular ''[[BIOMETAL|Bio Metals]]'' are said to be this in the game's intro.
* The [[Dom Z]] from ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]''.
* As of a mid-2022 update, the planetary destruction simulation game ''[[Solar Smash]]'' now includes a planet-sized swarm of buzzing, winged insects as one of the fates you can inflict on the Earth or other planet of your choice.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The nanomachine version is used in an episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]''. They species appears to be made artificially for a war from fifty-thousand years ago, and is meant to consume every planet they're sent to, spread to some other planets, and repeat until they're all dead.
* In ''[[Transformers]]'' we have the Insecticons, a literal swarm of alien locusts (and weevils and stag beetles). Unlike most Transformers, they don't live simply on energon. Instead they eat ''everything''
* The Matrix in ''[[Gargoyles]]'' was in danger of becoming an [[Star Trek|assimilation-happy version]] of this in nanomachine form until it fused with Dingo's [[Powered Armor]]...But there's always the potential for future hijinks!
* In the ''[[Xiaolin Showdown]]'' episode "Dangerous Minds", Jack Spicer accidentally [[Sealed Evil in a Can|releases]] a horde of [[Giant Spiders]]. According to the ancient legends, "The spiders are neither good nor evil. They are merely... ''consumers''. They consume vegetation, animals, buildings, even the earth itself. They eat... until there is nothing left to eat."
** There is also a Shen Gong Wu that releases a horde of stone locusts that luckily are solely herbivorous, but really quick at it. It was found in the episode in which the [[Monster of the Week|once-appearing villain]] was a plant, not stoppable in any other way.
* The Parasprites in ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]''. They started off eating every edible thing that they could get their teeth on, until Twilight casted a spell to remove their hunger for food. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Whereupon they started eating everything else instead]].
** The [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Changelings]] give off this particular vibe as well, what with their less-than-subtle similarities with to [[
== Other ==
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== [[Real Life]]? ==
* [[As You Know|As mentioned above,]] [[Science Is Bad|the "Grey Goo Scenario"]] [[Start of Darkness|refers to a colony of]] [[Nanomachines]] [[The Virus|designed to build more of themselves using available resources.]] [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?|The problem is,]] [[Evil Is Not a Toy|programming ''that'' is expected to be much easier than programming limits on what they reconstruct,]] [[It Got Worse|possibly resulting in an ever-expanding tide of nanomachines]] [[You Will Be Assimilated|turning everything on Earth into more of themselves]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|until nothing else is left.]]
** But it's unlikely for many reasons one of their is for example that the will only be able to consume other things as fast as they move and receive energy so if they want to consume the earth it would take a while.
** Nanomachines are surprisingly susceptible to [[Kill It with Fire|high temperatures...]]
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