Detecting Interstellar Idiots: A Field Guide for Cosmic Eavesdroppers

In the grand symphony of the cosmos—filled with ancient light and abyssal silences—we search for signs of intelligent life. But what if the true hallmark of a technological civilization isn’t a carefully modulated radio signal or a Dyson sphere, but something far more... idiotic? Say, for example, a nuclear war. Or, to put it more delicately: a flare of interplanetary stupidity detectable in ultraviolet light.

Yes, dear reader. Perhaps we’re not searching for intelligence beyond Earth, but for civilizations as self-destructive as our own. Welcome to the golden age of SETS: the Search for Extraterrestrial Stupidity.

When the Sky Lights Up with Foolishness

Imagine a planet—an Earth twin—circling a quiet dwarf star just a few dozen light-years away. One day, it flashes. Not from solar flares or asteroid impacts, but from thermonuclear war. A brief, tragic beacon of geopolitical ineptitude flares across the stars. It glows in ultraviolet, whispers in infrared, and then fades, leaving behind a charred silence and a chemical scar on the atmosphere.

This is not science fiction—it’s statistical extrapolation wrapped in irony. As Annie Jacobsen chillingly outlines in her book Nuclear War: A Scenario, even our own Earth could end this way. A missile from North Korea, a retaliation from the U.S., misinterpretations by Russia, and a cascade of mushroom clouds later, we’ve gone from civilization to cinders in the time it takes to finish your morning coffee.

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Assuming 50% of the energy from a global nuclear exchange is radiated, the light burst could reach 10¹⁵ watts—about 1% of the sunlight reflected by Earth. Not much, but not nothing. Enough, perhaps, for the Hubble or James Webb telescopes to spot if they were staring in the right direction. Provided the war occurs at just the right time. On just the right planet. In just the right stellar neighborhood.

The Odds of Observing the Obvious

And there lies the rub. The odds of catching one of these "Annie flares"—named after Jacobsen’s doomsday scenario—are vanishingly small. If Earth twins erupt in nuclear war once a century, and the flare lasts only a few hours, you'd need to monitor a million such planets constantly to catch just one.

And even then, astronomers—those great skeptics of the skies—would likely attribute the anomaly to something mundane. A magnetic flare, perhaps. A glitch. Anything but alien idiocy. After all, there’s a long tradition in science of sweeping technological anomalies under the rug of conventional explanations.

Do you remember that mysterious object discovered on January 2, 2025? Initially dismissed as a boring asteroid—until someone realized it matched the orbit of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster. The universe, it seems, has a sense of humor. Pity we often miss the punchlines.

War’s Lingering Breath

Fortunately (or tragically), nuclear war leaves more than just a flash. It transforms the atmosphere, injecting nitrous oxide, radioactive isotopes, and a chemical bouquet that might linger for centuries. These spectral fingerprints could be detected in transiting exoplanets, where the planet passes in front of its star and betrays its atmospheric secrets to our telescopes.

These lingering traces—like smoke after the fire—may offer better odds of detection than the flare itself. Which raises a haunting possibility: we might first discover alien civilizations not through their music or art, but by the echo of their self-immolation.

The Stupidity Threshold

This, then, is the bitter paradox. The more advanced a civilization becomes, the greater its power to destroy itself. Like money, which grants freedom only up to the point where it begins to enslave, technology is a double-edged laser sword. Beyond a certain threshold, progress becomes peril.

Have we already crossed that threshold? Are we inching toward our own version of Thelma and Louise’s final drive—technologies humming, AI engines running, no one at the wheel?

Perhaps what we need is not just a census of alien life, but a graph of civilization lifespans versus their tech levels. A cosmic obituary chart. Once we locate the red line of self-destruction, we might learn when to stop accelerating.

Because if the ultimate legacy of intelligence is a brief flash of light and a long chemical aftertaste, then perhaps we should stop aspiring to be intelligent—and start trying to be wise.

Listen to the audiobook Nuclear War: A Scenario for free