[drzaiusapelord]

That seems unusually optimistic to me. Considering how much warfare human society has had and now that we have nuclear weapons and the endless brinkmanship of them, it seems the reasonable view here is that intelligent species probably just destroy themselves after a certain level of development. There is no Federation or aliens visiting because societies don't like that long due to a self-inflicted extinction event.

Let's remember that Castro was begging the Soviets for a nuclear strike against the US and Khrushchev had to fight off a Politburo that wanted nuclear war during the crisis.

I can't see any reason why this wouldn't happen. Bigger guns means bigger consquences and eventually you'll have a war with the biggest guns - nukes or biological or grey goo or whatever and life will end. Funny how the most obvious answer is almost the most horrifying, thus all the silly suggestions about aliens becoming VR addicts or trans-dimensional supermen or whatever.

[Sven7]

It's a different world today though. Even if two countries go nuts and drop the bomb on each other, it doesn't really mean the rest will jump into the fray.