Where are they?

Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation are - depending on where you stand - fun or really un-fun thought experiments. Latter tells us us that probability of life is so high that it is almost completely certain that there are other intelligent species out there. But we haven't heard even a hint of anyone. Why is that?

What if almost civilizations rise to point where we are now, and higher - and then fall, never to be able to climb back up again? (well, I guess this would fall into "transmitting only briefly" category, in a fashion).

At this point, we, the humankind, have utilized almost every easily accessible source of raw materials (minerals and oil, primarily) that there are, and only by using fairly advanced tech we are able to extract more inaccessible resources right now.

We have managed to dodge a proverbial bullet with nuclear holocaust so far (but that story isn't at end yet), as well as biological pathogens and weapons (ditto there). Climate change is one of major issues at this point, and I can only guess how bad it could get. What if, say, 100 million people find their current location inhabitable and choose to move to better location -- say, North America or Europe? That scenario looks right now way too plausible for comfort, and would quite certainly trigger a major wars - in plural, all over the world.

This isn't the only scenario. Our globally high level of civilization is built on very fragile framework of technology where majority of people are very narrowly defined specialists, and any major disaster might bring it crashing down. If large enough number of these people are gone, the remaining population could very easily find their knowledge lacking in every field there is, from basic agriculture to ... well, anything. In just generation or two there could be huge monuments of high tech behind that we could no longer use (lack of knowledge or [electrical or chemical] power), care (lack of maintenance) or build (technology is always build on just slightly less advanced tech).

Again, easily available resources are now gone, and we no longer have tech to get to the hard-to-get ones. Could we ever rise up again as technological power? I am not certain that we could. Mankind might be doomed to live here, on this earth, never being able to get past the orbit or reach out for anyone.

How many civilizations have fallen like this, and will it be our destiny too?


“Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.”
(in Babylon 5, written by J. Michael Straczynski,)