Extinction Level Event

An Extinction Level Event (ELE or mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth or the home planet of a species. More than 99.9 percent of all the life-forms that have ever existed on the Earth have eventually become extinct. The Earth has already sustained five major extinction cycles, in which up to 90 percent of all life-forms vanished from the Earth. The Holocene extinction is now regarded as the sixth mass extinction, as in late 2021 the WWF suggested that over a million species could go extinct within a decade in the "largest mass extinction event since the end of the dinosaur age." Therefore, science and technology has to be used to change the fate of humanity.

Extinction is generally a Type 0 and Type I concern; however higher types may be almost fully eradicated by enemies.

As a Type II civilization expands aggressively using FTL and sprawls far beyond its government, it may regress into societal collapse and eventually a form of interstellar barbarism with little regard for life. Eventually each faction may adopt its own government and culture and evolve into a new species, leaving its origins long forgotten and effectively extinct.

Type III and beyond will have found instantaneous travel and spacetime manipulation, and so the problems of sprawl and uncontrolled government may be a thing of the past. They could become sophonts, be part of benevolent and civilized galactic or universal associations, and eventually ascend into higher level beings, effectively making their original species with its flawed genetic code extinct.

Non-anthropogenic ELEs:
Planetary management and respecting planetary boundaries have been proposed as approaches to preventing ecological catastrophes. Solutions of this scope may require megascale engineering. Space colonization and becoming a multiplanetary species (starting with Mars) is an alternative to improve the odds of surviving an extinction scenario.

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right." — Larry Niven.