Would other intelligent life have nuked themselves into extinction by now?

[Noonling]

I was thinking about this last night, as you do: are homo sapiens actually quite restrained for having had nuclear weapons for over seventy years but only using them (other than tests) twice? And not in the last seventy years.

Do other intelligent life in the universe just go nuke crazy once they discover WMDs and end up killing themselves?

Of course, that raises so many other questions:
- Could there in fact be intelligent life that is also a radioresistant extremophile - perhaps even thriving off dropping nukes so they do it all the time
- Are humans unusually social - do other aliens shun the very concept of cities, and thus while they could be chucking nukes all over the place the species would still survive - perhaps aided by them being a faster species than humans, thus being able to get to a mate and reproduce quicker?
- Are humans unusual in the order of their inventions? Perhaps some alien species discovered space colonisation and live on their version of Mars ("Zars") before they discovered nukes, and thus even if their home planet was obliterated the species would survive.
- Or we could be an unusually destructive species who value life so very little, and others would never even consider setting nukes off

Perhaps the real question is: How much time is normal to spend pondering other intelligent life that we'll almost certainly never have contact with?

[Mr_Simnock]

Spend a smuch time as you like, your llife mate...

[PlanktonSideburns]

Squirrels, NUKED would do it in a heartbeat, and if you questioned the little squirrel harp playing angel, he would do it again in an instant

[a duncandisorderly]

I reckon it's entirely possible that another civilisation (& I use the term loosely in our case) might well have blown the arse out of their planet by trying to enter the space-race using a small black hole as the heart of the engine, instead of going down the chemical or thermonuclear route ("oh no, far too dangerous!"), & just winked themselves into the after-life just as their soaps were getting interesting.

we're not even allowed to go to the moon these days. health & safety.

[Gerald Fjord]

great filter innit. fermi paradox and that. just fuckin google it i dont have all day.

[Noonling]

great filter innit. fermi paradox and that. just fuckin google it i dont have all day.

Yeah I KNOW, DURR, GOD, CUH!

I doubt the discovery of nukes would be the great filter though, just...a filter. But I wonder how much of a filter.

[Gerald Fjord]

i suppose all great filter scenarios come down to the same thing though - be it nukes or climate crisis or unleashing some bio-fuck right into the gene-o-sphere. it's all just a bit of tinkering gone awry innit. transforming matter, that's all anything is right, life especially. chlorphyll to co2, rabbits to dog eggs, that sorta thing. intelligent life just does it with a bit too much flair, bit too much cockiness - look god, no hands!-, yes, very good but are you sure you want to split that atom, darling? fuck you old man! yadda yadda yadda, you've seen jurassic park, you know how it is.

[a duncandisorderly]

is that danny de vito? what flick is that from? so I can avoid.

[Gerald Fjord]

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (nsfw obv)

[a duncandisorderly]

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (nsfw obv)

ah. don't you just hate that thing in sitcoms where the people he's trying to point something out to refuse to look in the direction he's pointing in?

[steve98]

Who says we'll "never have contact" with these alien races OP? We might. Maybe not in the traditional receiving-and-sending of radio waves way, but in some kind of quantum physics way; probably something to do with "Entanglement" (which I won't pretend to understand; but I understand enought to know that when one quantum scientist says stuff like "O no no no, intergalactic communication utilizing entangled wave-particles is impossible, pure sci-fi", another one will say "Beg to differ"). Anything's possible.

[idunnosomename]

I've actually always thought of a science-fiction story where advanced aliens visit and are all "chin up lads, at least you're trying, we've seen much worse"

[Replies From View]

It's why all the other planets are now so inhospitable mate.

[Grendle]

I wish aliens would sign their crop circles

[bgmnts]

I often wonder how othrt species on this planet would do if they had the same brains as us. Would it be exactly the same as us but with insect/reptile/bird bodies or would they be almost alien in civilisation? Who knows.

[idunnosomename]

I often wonder how othrt species on this planet would do if they had the same brains as us. Would it be exactly the same as us but with insect/reptile/bird bodies or would they be almost alien in civilisation? Who knows.

bored shitless without opposable thumbs probably

[alan nagsworth]

If another alien species got a glimpse at earth and part of that glimpse was them glimpsing through my window and seeing how amazing I am at shagging, I've absolutely no doubt in my mind they would have immediately shut down the Glimpse-o-Matic and wiped themselves off the face of their planet without even a moment's hesitation.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Who says we'll "never have contact" with these alien races OP? We might. Maybe not in the traditional receiving-and-sending of radio waves way, but in some kind of quantum physics way; probably something to do with "Entanglement" (which I won't pretend to understand; but I understand enought to know that when one quantum scientist says stuff like "O no no no, intergalactic communication utilizing entangled wave-particles is impossible, pure sci-fi", another one will say "Beg to differ"). Anything's possible.

I've thought about this.  Radio waves fade, at vast distances they become indistinguishable from the background noise.  Also take into account that any intelligent lifeforms existing elsewhere might not exist at the same time as us, so they've either been and gone, or are yet to appear.  A few space probes have left the solar system and in the future some alien race might find them.  I believe this is the only way we'll make any type of contact with alien races, via drifting artifacts.  On finding an artifact you aren't going to know where it came from to have any hope of of sending a 'reply', and if you could reply it's likely those who sent it will no longer exist.  Any contact with alien races is going to be a one-way deal, the message being "we were here".

[Glebe]

[WesterlyWinds]

I often wonder how othrt species on this planet would do if they had the same brains as us. Would it be exactly the same as us but with insect/reptile/bird bodies or would they be almost alien in civilisation? Who knows.

Read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky for an interesting take on this question.