[carapace]

From the POV of the rest of the galaxy we seem like the xenomorphs in the "Alien" movies.

- Obviously kind of sentient or intelligent, but

- Totally uninterested in communication.

- Recognize others only as resources to consume for reproduction.

- No other goals, just blind reproduction/consumption

- Remake the environment into our own image, no other life forms can live there. (our cities look like scabs or disease crust from orbit.)

- Violent, invasive, destructive, pointless.

So why don't they "take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?" Because that's human-thinking, it literally wouldn't occur to non-human sentients because they're not sick. Instead we're just quarantined (that's the answer to the Fermi Paradox) and they study us and hope for the best. The Martians evacuated Mars when they realized Sir Percival Lowell could see them.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Interesting take :)

You should read (if you haven't) The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks, particularly the eponymous novella. Summary from the wikipedia page:

"The State of the Art"

At 100 pages long, the title novella makes up the bulk of the book. The novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late 1970s, and also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by featuring two of that novel's characters, Diziet Sma and the drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw. Here, Sma argues for contact with Earth, to try to fix the mess the human species has made of it; another Culture citizen, Linter, goes native, choosing to renounce his Culture body enhancements so as to be more like the locals; and Li, who is a Star Trek fan, argues that the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species" should be eradicated with a micro black hole. The ship Arbitrary has ideas, and a sense of humour, of its own.

  'Also while I'd been away, the ship had sent a request 
  on a postcard to the BBC's World Service, asking for 
  'Mr David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the good ship 
  Arbitrary and all who sail in her.' (This from a machine 
  that could have swamped Earth's entire electro-magnetic
  spectrum with whatever the hell it wanted from somewhere
  beyond Betelgeuse.) It didn't get the request played. The   
  ship thought this was hilarious.'[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_of_the_Art

[carapace]

It's just a thought that occurred to me one day and haunted me ever since.

I've read a couple of Iain Banks' books but he doesn't quite gel for me somehow. These days I don't read fiction because it can't compete with reality. ;-)