History Main / MarsNeedsWater

* The BackStory of the anime ''Anime/GreenLegendRan'' is that giant wooden monoliths called "Holy Mothers" landed on Earth and drew all of Earth's natural resources into themselves - not just all the water but most of the ''breathable air.'' Travel between "Holy Greens" is essentially space travel, with [[BaseOnWheels airtight ships]] and suits. As one would expect, those who control the Greens control the water, and thus the population.

* While this isn't confirmed in-story during ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds'' (2005), director Creator/StevenSpielberg told Newsweek magazine in an interview that the aliens might be attacking for water.

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* Downplayed in ''Videogame/{{Half Life 2}}''. When close to some docks, if the player looks really close, they can notice that the dock isn't anywhere ''close'' to the shore, implying that there's less water in the ocean than before. WordOfGod also states that The Combine have placed a giant portal at the bottom of Earth's oceans, which is sending the water to other Combine-conquered worlds. However, the secondary purpose was terraforming.

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* Koopa's trying to make his world and ours a MergedReality in the ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' movie so they can get access to our water.

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[[ArtisticLicenseSpace Realistically, invading Earth isn't a smart way to get water]] as there are a variety of other more easily accessible locations in space. All comets and a variety of asteroids, moons, and even large, interstellar clouds have water in great abundance and are much more accessible and easy to harvest than Earth, as well as lacking those pesky hairless apes. (For instance, Europa has a water ocean ''60 miles deep''.) Occasionally, this will be justified (or handwaved) through an explanation that Earth's water somehow has some quality that other sources lack.

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* Aliens capable of interstellar space travel who were only looking for raw materials would probably steer clear of Earth. The tiny moon of Titan (one of Saturn's 62 moons) has hundreds of times the hydrocarbons (oil and gas) that Earth has, Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) has twice the volume of water Earth has and is one of many tiny moons to have more water than we do, and even our own Moon is amazingly rich in titanium. And this is only what we have in our comparatively tiny solar system, all of which is uninhabited (and unguarded[[note]]Well, ''almost'' unguarded if you include space probes studying some of them[[/note]]) ''except'' for our home.

* Inverted in [[https://www.zazzle.com.au/water_on_mars_poster-228072988376343371 this mock {{retraux}} movie poster]] by Steve Thomas.

* A ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' strip parodies this with a poem Calvin wrote about a flying saucer stealing the Earth's water and air.

[[ArtisticLicenseAstronomy Realistically, invading Earth isn't a smart way to get water]] as there are a variety of other more easily accessible locations in space. All comets and a variety of asteroids, moons, and even large, interstellar clouds have water in great abundance and are much more accessible and easy to harvest than Earth, as well as lacking those pesky hairless apes. (For instance, Europa has a water ocean ''60 miles deep''.) Occasionally, this will be justified (or handwaved) through an explanation that Earth's water somehow has some quality that other sources lack.

* Koopa's trying to DimensionalMerge his world with ours in the ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' movie so they can get access to our water.

* Koopa's trying to DimensionMerge his world with ours in the ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' movie so they can get access to our water.

* In ''Webcomic/GrrlPower'' Dabbler once explained the flaws [[http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/647 in this plot]].

[[ArtisticLicenseAstronomy Realistically, invading Earth isn't a smart way to get water]] as there are a variety of other more easily accessible locations in space. All comets and a variety of asteroids, moons, and even large, interstellar clouds have water in great abundance and are much more accessible and easy to harvest than Earth, as well as lacking those pesky hairless apes. (For instance, Europa has a water ocean ''60 miles deep''.)

* In Creator/OlafStapleton's ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'' the Martians invade Earth during the reign of the Second Men in order to steal water, along with plant life and diamonds. Then again it was written back when people thought Venus was covered with oceans of water (apparently too far from Mars) instead of lava.

* The second scene of ''Series/TheExpanse'' has an OPA speaker claiming that Ceres was once covered in ice, but Earth and Mars have stripped it away leaving the Belters dependent on water shipments from Saturn. The loss of the ice freighter ''Canterbury'' to what seems to be a Martian attack spark riots throughout the Belt.

* In ''Series/{{V 1983}}'' the Visitors are after Earth's water, and the fact that [[ToServeMan humans are delicious]] too doesn't hurt. The {{Novelization}} has a [[JustifiedTrope justification]]; in this {{Verse}}, the industrial effort of interstellar space development [[TerraDeforming irreversibly destroys biospheres]], and they have been unable to develop water purification technologies capable of efficiently supporting millions, let alone billions of people. Thus, the resulting empires are not only constantly fighting over whatever ''relatively pure'' water remains, but ''food'' as well; maybe they could harvest water from undefended comets(after filtering out twenty percent of their weight in [[{{Squick}} ammonia]][[note]]Though in real life, ammonia is actually a very useful chemical, to the point that [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process there's an entire industrial process for making it]]. If anything, the ammonia in comets should make them ''more'' attractive to a spacefaring society.[[/note]]), but a life-sustaining world which not only has over a quadrillion tons of fairly clean water but four and a half billion two-hundred-pound food animals too stupid to colonize space themselves? The planet looks like a buffet table guarded by illiterate street punks. And the Visitors have FrickinLaserBeams... which happen to be fusion powered and need heavy water as fuel. [[note]]Heavy water has deuterium instead of regular hydrogen - about 115 in every million water molecules are heavy, regardless of where the water comes from, so they could use space-harvested water for that and for at least some industrial stuff. But where's the fun in that?[[/note]]

** Inverted by the Gem Homeworld: They tried to colonize Earth for its minerals, physically consuming the planet's mass, but water seems to be one of the few materials they ''don't'' want. Homeworld has no rain, a graphic shows a [[HostileTerraforming fully colonized Earth]] would have no oceans, their [[SiliconBasedLife biology]] requires no water, and the Diamond Authority's "extraction chamber" it the only machine that's show using any. They even appear to have created Lapis Lazuli's [[HiveCasteSystem caste]] just to use that water for terraforming (via ripping the surface of the planet apart) before disposing of it.

* The 1929 tale ''The Fate of the Poseidonia'' by Clare Winger Harris. The sea level mysteriously drops a few feet and an ocean liner disappears, and the protagonist seeks to find out why. The editor of Magazine/AmazingStories had created a cover showing an alien spacecraft lifting an ocean liner into the air and offered $500 for anyone who could write a story that fitted, so it's not like scientific realism was a prerequisite.
* James S. A. Corey's ''Literature/TheExpanse'', it may not come from Earth, but the SpaceColdWar comes to a head because of water. The loss of a single ice freighter to military action from one set of absentee landlords is enough for the Belt to erupt into riots.

* In Olaf Stapleton's ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'' the Martians invade Earth during the reign of the Second Men in order to steal water, along with plant life and diamonds. Then again it was written back when people thought Venus was covered with oceans of water (apparently too far from Mars) instead of lava.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''The Martian Way''. In this {{novelette}}, spacecraft use water from Earth as reaction mass. To stir up anti-Martian sentiment as part of his campaign, an Earth politician named "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Hilder]]" (though Asimov planned it as an attack on [[UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy Senator McCarthy]]) says that spacers are using up Earth's water. In response the Martians go to Saturn and haul home one of the ice chunk asteroids which make up Saturn's rings, providing them with enough water to last 2000 years. The Martians snarkily offer to sell Earth some to "make up for" the minuscule amount of Earth water they've used over the years.

[[ScienceMarchesOn Ironically]], using Mars itself has been discovered to have water in RealLife as of 2015.

* Lampshaded in ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'' (along with a number of other BMovie explanations) as to the motives of the alien invaders.

* In ''Series/{{V 1983}}'' the Visitors are after Earth's water, and the fact that [[ToServeMan humans are delicious]] too doesn't hurt. The {{Novelization}} has a good [[JustifiedTrope justification]]; in this {{Verse}}, the industrial effort of interstellar space development [[TerraDeforming irreversibly destroys biospheres]], and they have been unable to develop water purification technologies capable of efficiently supporting millions, let alone billions of people. Thus, the resulting empires are not only constantly fighting over whatever ''relatively pure'' water remains, but ''food'' as well; maybe they could harvest water from undefended comets(after filtering out twenty percent of their weight in [[{{Squick}} ammonia]]), but a life-sustaining world which not only has over a quadrillion tons of fairly clean water but four and a half billion two-hundred-pound food animals too stupid to colonize space themselves? The planet looks like a buffet table guarded by illiterate street punks. And the Visitors have FrickinLaserBeams... which happen to be fusion powered and need heavy water as fuel. [[note]]Heavy water has deuterium instead of regular hydrogen - about 115 in every million water molecules are heavy, regardless of where the water comes from, so they could use space-harvested water for that and for at least some industrial stuff. But where's the fun in that?[[/note]]

* The 1929 Magazine/AmazingStories tale ''The Fate of the Poseidonia'' by Clare Winger Harris. The sea level mysteriously drops a few feet and an ocean liner disappears, and the protagonist seeks to find out why.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TheMartianWay": In this {{novelette}}, spacecraft use water from Earth as reaction mass. To stir up anti-Martian sentiment as part of his campaign, an Earth politician named "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Hilder]]" (though Asimov planned it as an attack on [[UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy Senator McCarthy]]) says that spacers are using up Earth's water. In response the Martians go to Saturn and haul home one of the ice chunk asteroids which make up Saturn's rings, providing them with enough water to last 2000 years. The Martians snarkily offer to sell Earth some to "make up for" the minuscule amount of Earth water they've used over the years.
* ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds: Global Dispatches''. One character comes across a Martian staring rapt at a flowing stream, implying this trope as one of the reasons why the Martians invade Earth. In this case it would be a JustifiedTrope as the Martians are seeking to conquer a resource-rich planet for colonization, rather than just take the water back with them.

** Inverted by the Gem Homeworld: They tried to colonize Earth for its minerals, physically consuming the planet's mass, but water seems to be one of the few materials they ''don't'' want. Homeworld has no rain, a graphic shows a [[HostileTerraforming fully colonized Earth]] would have no oceans, their [[SiliconBasedLife biology]] requires no water, and the Diamond Authority's "extraction chamber" it the only machine that's show using any. They even appear to have created Lapis Lazuli's [[HiveCasteSystem caste]] just to ''dispose of'' all that water.