depletion of a vital natural resource theme
People over-exploit a vital resource on which they depend and civilization collapses.
Examples
The Salt Vampires of planet M-113 were on the road to extinction as their planet had run out of salt in tos1x05 "The Man Trap". Where exactly the salt went is unclear but perhaps they ate it all.
13 total · 8 major · 5 minor
| Story | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| movie: Conquest of Space (1955) | major | It was necessary to go to Mars to seek out more natural resources for Earth. Sargent Imoto explained that Japan went to war seeking out resources for his small country, and he didn't want to same thing to repeat itself on a global scale in the future. |
| movie: Firebird 2015 AD (1981) | major | The US government outlawed the distribution of gasoline to the public ostensibly because of a global fuel shortage. |
| movie: Kronos (1957) | major | The aliens had exhausted the natural resources of their home planet and sent an accumulator device to Earth to take the planet's energy. A scientist explained that one day humanity could one day too deplete Earth's natural resources. |
| movie: Mad Max 2 (1981) | major | The film was set in a future where society had collapsed because the oil ran out. |
| movie: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) | major | The film was set in a future where society had collapsed because the oil ran out. |
| movie: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) | major | The film was set in a future where society had collapsed because the oil ran out. |
| shortstory: The Comet Doom (1928) | major | The comet cyborgs were running out of the natural resources they required to perpetuate their civilization, and resolved use the Earth to keep them going for a long while. |
| tos1x05 | major | Salt Vampires of Planet M-113 :: The Salt Vampires of planet M-113 were on the road to extinction as their planet had run out of salt. |
| futurama6x13 | minor | Robots exhausted the world's petroleum oil supply. |
| movie: Avatar (2009) | minor | It was explained that by 2154, humans had depleted Earth's natural resources with a severe energy crisis being the result. |