"They also found that even if the galaxy reached its civilizational peak over five billion years ago, most of the civilizations that were around that time have likely self-annihilated"
People wake up each day and try to wipe humans off the planet, my favorite example is the: Nike missile project. Let's take hundreds of low range (non icbm) missiles point them into the air, arm with modern nuclear warheads and explode them into airplane formations. This would have turned the bay area into glass just to ensure the Russians didn't bomb us. But rest assured, these sites were spread around the country. How is it, during these design meetings someone doesn't speak up: "This isn't a great idea".