Not sure if you were actually kidding, but honestly is it something to start considering as an answer to Fermi’s Paradox?
You mean the dark forest? Of course it’s probable.
It was a literary device that made no sense in practice. Spoiler: How could extremely powerful civilisations spread massive star killing guns around in the universe every ~50 light years but not have the ability to detect intelligent life in each star system?
If they distributed those guns a few million years or so before the intelligent life existed...