> It's orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude less energy to communicate with (including obscuring your origin, if you want) than destroy a civilization. I

> It's orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude less energy to communicate with (including obscuring your origin, if you want) than destroy a civilization. IIRC The Dark Forest addresses this directly - saying that wiping out a civilization must be cheap and casual. There's a chapter where an alien scout detects Earth, puts a dimensionality attack cartridge in a gun or something, launches it and goes on with their business.