In-House Counsel

The Question Of Intelligent Life In The Universe

How can anyone concentrate on the law during times like these?

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nuclear option mushroom cloudThere are many theories about whether intelligent life exists in the universe other than on Earth.

(There’s some question about whether intelligent life exists even on Earth, but that’s another issue.)

If intelligent life exists elsewhere, can we communicate with those creatures? Are those creatures not yet advanced, so we’d be trying to communicate with apes?  Are those creatures too far advanced, so they wouldn’t bother communicating with us, the apes? Would the advanced civilization be warlike, so communicating with that civilization would be our doom? Or, the question that’s eating at me today: Is there no super-advanced intelligent life elsewhere in the universe because no civilization ever survived to that stage?

I’m feeling pessimistic these days.

I don’t think any civilization ever survived to an advanced stage, and I don’t think we’re going to make it, either.

To get to an advanced stage, a civilization has to pass through less-advanced stages without destroying itself. My only frame of reference, of course, is human beings, but I can’t see this happening.

It might take mankind several hundred — perhaps a thousand — years to get to a super-advanced stage, where we’ve figured out how to travel at the speed of light or to pass through wormholes that let us navigate the galaxies in a reasonable time. What are the odds that we survive another several hundred, or a thousand, years?

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Approaching nil, I think.

Thirty years ago, we survived the possibility that a rogue nation-state might acquire chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons and set off World War III, annihilating mankind. We thought we had successfully navigated that stage.

Twenty years ago, 9/11 showed us that people would knowingly destroy themselves to make some religious or political point. Over time, terribly destructive weapons have become, and increasingly will become, more widely available. This will ultimately put a powerful weapon in the hands of some nutcase who wants to destroy the world for his or her own purposes. That’s going to be mighty hard to stop.

Two years ago, it became clear that new viruses will threaten mankind. We may have survived COVID-19, but give viruses a few more hundred years to evolve, and surely something will spring into existence sufficiently lethal and transmissible to threaten mankind’s collective existence.

Within the last month, two more threats have illustrated themselves. The United Nations issued a report saying that mankind was running out of time to stop climate change. If we don’t act intelligently and quickly, it will soon be too late.

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Couple that with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All it takes is one narcissistic leader to miscalculate about one thing, and you can again feel the threat of World War III. How aggressively should the United States and NATO supply weapons to Ukraine? One misstep could set off World War III. Should NATO establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine? That means that U.S. or NATO forces would fly AWACS over Ukraine and destroy ground-based anti-aircraft systems, some of which are located in Russia. Again, one misstep leads to mushroom clouds.

Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons. Those include, of course, North Korea, Pakistan, the United States, Russia, and China. It’s obviously conceivable that a miscalculating narcissist could come to power in any of those nine countries. And nuclear weapons will surely become more widely available in the future — just ask Iran, for example.

What do you suppose the line is for the over-under bet on human civilization?

2150?

2230?

2300?

How can anyone concentrate on the law?

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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