Kardashev Scale, our Guide for the Future, and how Close are we to Type 1 Civilization

And what are the requirements to become one of them

Published in

Predict

5 min readAug 24, 2021

Earth, the solar system, a galaxy and a group of galaxies in cartoon style — Photo from the youtube channel **Kurzgesagt**

In my first ever article on Medium, I talked about Dyson Spheres saying that these massive projects were far from our current civilization’s capabilities. Then I said that in order to complete such a task, at least a type 2 civilization could hope to achieve this monstrous plan for humanity.

It is such an amazing concept to think about and it’s a great guide for us in the future because it carves the steps we need in order to rule the mysteries of the cosmos. That said, this is what we’re going to talk about in this article. How such civilizations could exist and what does it take to become one of them or even better.

What is the Kardashev scale?

The Kardashev scale was originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev is a method of ranking civilizations by their energy use. The scale has been refined and expanded over the decades, but in general, it puts civilizations in four different categories.

Type 1 civilization — A civilization able to use the available energy of their home planet. They would be capable of utilizing all resources skillfully. From our point of view, we should reach this state in a couple of centuries.

Type 2 civilization — A civilization able to use the available energy of its star and planetary system. That means having complete control over planets, rocks, and the Sun almost thousands of years from now.

Type 3 civilization — A civilization able to use the available energy of its galaxy. Dominance over billions of stars, trillions of planets, and even these supermassive black holes located at the center of galaxies. We should reach this in hundreds of thousands of years from now to 1 million years.

Type 4 civilization — This is going out of proportion but a civilization able, you guessed it, to use the available energy of multiple galaxies. This is such a massive concept that we can’t really understand how and when that could be possible.

Between each type, a lot is going on. So to make the scale more useful, we needed subcategories. On the lower end of the spectrum, there are type 0 to type 1 civilization. Anything from hunter-gatherers, to something we could achieve in the next hundred years. These might actually be abundant in the Milky Way. Like you probably guessed, humanity has not even achieved type 1 status but it’s around 0.75 on the scale making us very “close”.

A civilization that is not able to actively transmitting radio signals into space might just be as close as our nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system. At that point, we would have no way of knowing if they exist.

Other types of civilizations we have not discussed so far are type 5 civilizations, capable of using the Universe as they see fit, and type Omegas which could have the power to control the multiverse.

Are far are we from Type 1?

As mention, humanity ranks at about level 0.75 on the Kardashev scale. We have altered our planet, we’ve created huge structures, mined and stripped mountains, removed forests, and drained swamps. We’ve created rivers and lakes, and changed the composition and temperature of the atmosphere. If progress continues, and we don’t make Earth uninhabitable, we will become a full Type 1 civilization in the next few hundred years. And that is only if the Great Filter is not ahead of us.

As we are not even a type 1 yet, we’ve already started to look outside so any civilization that becomes a type 1 is bound to search outward, because it’s very likely that it’s still curious, competitive, greedy, and expansionist.

It is important to mention that these assumptions are only because our civilization sample size is only one, us. So we may make incorrect assumptions based solely on ourselves. We know that humans started out with nothing but minds and hands that could build tools. We know that humans are curious, competitive, greedy for resources, and expansionist. The more of these qualities our ancestors had, the more successful they were. Being one with nature is great and all but it’s not the path for innovation, irrigations systems, or cities. So based on these facts, it’s reasonable to assume that aliens able to take over their home planet also have these qualities.

If aliens have to follow the same laws of physics as we do, then there is a measurable metric for progress, Energy use.

Next step for Type 2

The next reasonable step towards Type 2 is trying to alter and mine other planets and bodies such as asteroids. This might start with outposts in space, transition to infrastructure and industries near the home planet, move on to colonies and end with terraforming other planets, by changing their atmosphere, their rotation, or position making them suitable for human life.

As civilization expands and uses more and more stuff and space, its energy consumption will scale with them. So at that point, they may embark on the largest project a starting Type 2 civilization can take on, harnessing the energy of their star by building a Dyson Sphere or a Dyson Swarm.

Once this megastructure is finished, energy has become practically unlimited for molding the solar system however they see fit.

For now…

For now, our first objective should be to control our home planet, saving us and our future generations. By the point of becoming a Type 1, we should be able to inverse the effects we cause on our atmosphere. But I understand the reason for going outside already since a disaster could wipe out humanity at any second. We shouldn't be ready to scrape others planets but here we are, planning missions for colonizing Mars, and don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing!