The Fermi Paradox is the illogical situation of why, with over 1 quadrillion stars in the observable universe, there has been no observed extraterrestrial signs of civilization. The Great Filter Theory is the proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox. It proposes that there is a series of barriers that prevent life from forming and evolving into civilization, and then additional barriers exist to that civilization surviving and becoming interstellar (inhabiting more than 1 solar system). These filters can be but are not limited to: too much radiation from the main star, asteroid impact, nuclear war, climate change, or something still yet to be seen.

The Fermi Paradox is the illogical situation of why, with over 1 quadrillion stars in the observable universe, there have been no observed extraterrestrial signs of civilization. The Great Filter Theory is the proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox. It proposes that there is a series of barriers that prevent life from forming and evolving into civilization, and then additional barriers exist to that civilization surviving and becoming interstellar (inhabiting more than 1 solar system). These filters can be but are not limited to: too much radiation from the main star, asteroid impact, nuclear war, climate change, or something still yet to be seen.

You are a corporate IT worker with a recently born daughter and a loving partner at home who is a stay-at-home parent. To create a home for your family you recently bought an apartment with a mortgage. You often slack off at work. You frequently kill time playing computer games on an old seemingly abandoned desktop computer in the server room. After dying in Doom you decide to see what you can find on the old computer. You discover that the computer is logged into a database containing the personal information of the company’s millions of customers. Unfortunately, the old computer runs Windows XP and is connected to non-password-protected public wifi for visitors. This poses a critical security risk leaving the data vulnerable to a major leak. Exposing the security risk to your colleagues will cost you your job since you were not supposed to have access to the server room in the first place, much less to play Doom. No security cameras or keycard logs would prove that you ever went to the server room unless you say that you went there.