  Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are, as the name implies, short and intense pulses
of radiation at wavelengths of roughly one metre. FRBs have extremely high
brightness temperatures, which points to a coherent source of radiation. The
energy of a single burst ranges from $10^{36}$ to $10^{39}$ erg. At the high
end of the energy range, FRBs have enough energy to unbind an earth-sized
planet, and even at the low end, there is enough energy to vaporise and unbind
the atmosphere and the oceans. We therefore propose that FRBs are signatures of
an artificial terraformer, capable of eradicating life on another planet, or
even destroy the planet entirely. The necessary energy can be harvested from
Wolf-Rayet stars with a Dyson sphere ($\sim 10^{38}$ erg s$^{-1}$) , and the
radiation can be readily produced by astrophysical masers. We refer to this
mechanism as Volatile Amplification of a Destructive Emission of Radiation
(VADER). We use the observational information to constrain the properties of
the apparatus. We speculate that the non-repeating FRBs are low-energy pulses
used to exterminate life on a single planet, but leaving it otherwise intact,
and that the stronger repeating FRB is part of an effort to destroy multiple
objects in the same solar system, perhaps as a preventative measure against
panspermia. In this picture, the persistent synchrotron source associated with
the first repeating FRB arises from the energy harvesting process. Finally we
propose that Oumuamua might have resulted from a destruction of a planet in
this manner.
