As far as the history of the universe is concerned we are actually super early on in its lifespan. So in some ways it’s actually more likely that we will be one of the early civilizations that perish before the others show up.

You mean an entire empire could have existed a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?

The problem is the human mind cannot understand the concept of how far one single light year is. Even Fermi struggled.

This has always been my suspicion, we are not (intelligently) alone in the universe, but in time.