We were not drinking beers. It was just a turn of phrase. 'Hold my beer.' Followed by the reply 'Watch this.'

An evolved species.. any evolved species, stands upon that accumulated, combined knowledge. What they have accumulated in technology.

Some devices can have very direct consequences. The Fermi filter equation takes that into consideration. How a technological misstep might cause an evolved place to restart from scratch.

There were warning signs.. in safety process terms, they call it a 'near miss'.

If people slip on an ice covered sidewalk 50 times; eventually someone gets severely hurt.

Bad results are warning. A truly evolved species would understand. They would prepare. They would avoid.

That was something my research partner and I failed to do.

We did NOT set the atmosphere of our planet on fire. What we did was worse.