Fictional Civilizations and the Kardashev Scale — Types 0 & I
What Do Our Stories Predict About Our Future?
In a previous post, I discussed the Kardashev Scale and asked whether having access to vast technological power makes a civilization truly advanced. In this post, I’ll be using the scale to rank civilizations from science fiction and fantasy. By comparing each civilization’s supposed advancement with its actions, we can get a sense of whether the scale is an accurate indicator of progress for humanity.
Before we break out the calculators and fan wikis, we should go over a few caveats. First of all, ranking these civilizations will require a fair amount of assumptions. For example, we’ll treat any magic or seemingly-magical technology as having quantifiable aspects. Secondly, we should acknowledge that the civilizations on this list are from stories written by authors offering their own unique perspectives on the advancement of civilization. While these writers may have great insights into how humanity has dealt with power up to the present day, their ideas may not apply to far future civilizations. Far future civilizations may operate in a way that we cannot comprehend at this point in our evolution. Hopefully, these examples can still offer both aspirational and cautionary tales that can help humanity plan for our immediate future.
I should also mention that this post will contain both minor and major spoilers for various movies, TV shows, video games, etc. You’ve been warned.
Let’s begin by reviewing how we’ll be ranking these civilizations. Each one will be assigned a Kardashev number K, based on how much power P they’re able to utilize. The formula for K is:
Each civilization will be put into one of six types. To qualify for a certain type, a civilization’s Kardashev number must be greater than or equal to the minimum K value for that type, which we found in the last post, but still smaller than the minimum K value for the next level up. For example, a Type 1 civilization should have a Kardashev number higher than the minimum Type 1 requirement but still not high enough to be considered Type 2. To see exactly what defines these types, click the link below.
With all that under our belt, let’s start the math!
Type 0 Civilizations (K<1.16)
GAIA (K=0.60)
In the video game Horizon: Zero Dawn, humanity was wiped out in the year 2066 by hostile man-made machines designed to use organic materials, i.e. living things, as fuel. The event was called the Faro Plague. Life on Earth was nearly eradicated, but a small group of researchers were able to preserve the DNA necessary to repopulate Earth’s species. They knew they’d all be gone before the planet could be restored, so they created an advanced artificial intelligence named GAIA that would be able to imagine new ways of replenishing the planet. GAIA came up with the idea to create robots with animal-like designs and use them to terraform the planet back to habitability.
In the game, you discover logs left behind by scientists. According to these, the Faro Plague began in 2064. The scientists in-game predicted that all life on land would have been consumed by 2066 and the last marine organisms would be finished off by 2068. According to the game’s timeline, GAIA made Earth ready for human repopulation by 2381. If we assume this means GAIA had finished replenishing Earth’s biosphere, that means GAIA was able to reproduce all the biomass on planet Earth in just 313 years. All living things need energy to grow, so we can define GAIA’s power output by finding how much energy was needed to grow all that life so quickly. Living things are composed of many different types of molecules, but some of the most common are proteins, carbohydrates, lipids such as fats, organic acids and fibers. Each of these molecules has a certain amount of chemical energy per unit of mass. Averaging the energy densities of all these molecules gives us 1.84x10⁷ joules per kilogram as the average energy density of organic matter. The Earth has a total biomass of 550 gigatons, or 5.5x10¹⁴ kilograms. Multiplying together, we find that GAIA would have needed to supply 1.0x10²² joules of energy to replenish all life on Earth. Dividing this energy output by the 313 years it took GAIA to do it, we find that she would have needed an average power output of 1.0x10¹² watts. This gives GAIA a Kardashev number of 0.60.
Humanity (K=0.73)
For reference, we should include our own civilization on this list. As of right now, human beings use about 5.65x10²⁰ joules per year, or 1.88x10¹³ watts of power. This gives humanity a current Kardashev number of 0.73.
Humanity in the Year 2100 (K=0.78)
If in the year 2100, everyone on Earth uses the same amount of power the average American uses today, we’ll need 70 terrawatts, or 7.0x10¹³ watts, to power our civilization. This estimate assumes we’ll develop the necessary renewable and regenerative energy infrastructure to sustain our power usage. It also takes into consideration an increase in Earth’s population. This would give humanity in 2100 a Kardashev number of 0.78.
The Farobots (K=0.84)
The Farobots were the machines that wiped out life on Earth in Horizon: Zero Dawn by consuming all of Earth’s biomass as fuel. If we use the same number for the energy content of Earth’s biosphere we did earlier, we get that the Farobots consumed a total 1.0x10²² joules of energy. According to the game, this took them about 15 months to do. Dividing the total energy they consumed by the amount of time it took to consume it, we get that the Farobots power consumption was 2.5x10¹⁴ watts. This gives the Farobots a Kardashev number of 0.84.
This is where we begin to see some of the bindspots that arise when we rank a civilization’s advancement purely based on the amount of power they can use. Where GAIA used her power to create life and hope for humanity, the Farobots sought only to fulfill their basic programming, no matter the costs. GAIA could imagine and learn while the Farobots were essentially mindless eating-machines, hardly worthy of being called a civilization. This led to them running out of organic matter to consume and dying off. Analysis of the Farobots brings up three important ideas: 1) a civilization is only advanced if it can think critically about its future, 2) a civilization is only advanced if it has goals beyond simply accumulating power, and 3) a civilization capable of consuming vast amounts of energy should have a sustainable source that they can draw upon without destroying their home(or the homes of any other civilizations) in the process.
Humanity in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (K=0.90)
In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, certain people have the ability to bend one of the four archetypal elements: water, earth, fire and air. Based around the protagonists trying to stop one of four nations from conquering the world, the show explores the costs of war and industrialization, the benefits of developing and sharing new technology, whether power is truly worth pursuing and what it really means to be strong. The spin-off series The Legend of Korra uses Avatar’s worldbuilding to question the social impacts of not all members of a society being able to bend and the dangers of technology or power falling into the wrong hands. The Avatar themself is an extremely powerful bender who repeatedly reincarnates in order to keep balance and peace among the peoples of all four nations. Across both shows, there is a recurring question of what the Avatar is supposed to be and whether they are a necessary figure in the world.
There are two factors that go into determining how much power the collective nations of this world are using: how much energy they use in their technology and how much power can be produced by all of their benders. For now, we’ll ignore the power output possessed by the Avatar. By the time Legend of Korra takes place, humanity has reached a level of industrialization akin to that of our world in the 1920s. The global power consumption of their world at this point is likely the same as it was for ours. In 1920, fossil fuels produced 1.25x10¹² watts of gloabal power and accounted for about 89% of energy production in the US. Using the US as a standard, we get that the total world energy production in 1920 would have been around 1.4x10¹² watts.
Now for the benders. Though their feats and abilities vary widely, we’ll assume the average bender of each element to be at the same power level. One of the most impressive feats of bending comes from certain firebenders who can generate electricity in the form of lightning. In the show, it takes about 9 seconds on average for a bender to produce lightning. In real life, even a relatively weak lightning bolt strikes with about 50 million joules of energy. This means lightning benders can achieve a power output of 5.5x10⁶ watts. Since lightning bending is a difficult skill to learn in-universe, we’ll consider it to be the maximum potential of the average bender. Assuming the world of Avatar is about 10% benders, we can multiply our average bending power by 10% of the world population in 1920 to get a total of 1.0x10¹⁵ watts being output by all the benders by the time of Legend of Korra. Putting all these numbers together, we get that at the time of Korra, humanity would have achieved a total power output of about 1.0x10¹⁵ watts. This earns them a Kardashev number of 0.90.
Type 1 Civilizations (1.16≤K<1.86)
Anyone Running Our Simulation (K=1.27)
A very popular hypothesis is that all of human experience has been happening inside of a computer simulation. If so, how much power would that simulation need to run? A high-end estimate for the processing speed of the human brain is 10²⁰ operations per second. Multiplying this by the current world population, we get that simulating all of humanity would require 7.5x10²⁹ operations per second. The best classical computers run at 4.155x10¹⁷ operations per second and use about 2500 kilowatts of power. So with classical computers, you’d need 4.5x10¹⁸ watts to simulate all of humanity’s conscious experiences. Quantum computers may be able do this exponentially better. Google has recently developed a quantum computer with a processing speed supposedly 1080 times faster than the most powerful classical computers. It uses just 25 kilowatts. With this efficiency, you’d only need 4.2x10¹³ watts of power to run the simulation. However, quantum computers currently only work for specific types of problems, so we’ll just use the amount for classical computing. This corresponds to a Kardashev number of 1.27.
Now if either of these numbers seem low, consider that human brains only use about 20% of the body’s 80 watt power consumption. So all human brains combined are already running this simulation using just 120 billion watts, only a seventh the amount of power used by the entire United States, 29% of our estimate for a simulation that uses quantum computers and 0.0000027% of our estimate for a simulation using classical computers. As we’ll see, none of these numbers are very large in the grand scheme of the universe. So let’s hope that if we are simulated, nobody trips over our power cord.
The Avatar (K=1.3)
In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatar alone possesses enough power to dramatically increase their civilization’s Kardashev ranking. The idea of an ordinary human possessing so much power is often the source of conflict in the show. Eah avatar struggles to fill the role of a protector and peacekeeper they are meant to play. Using this premise of an unthinkable amount of power placed in the hands of an ordinary person, the show investigates what it means for someone to have so much power in a society and the impacts it creates on the world.
So how much power are we talking about? Each avatar in the show can call upon the power of all the avatars that came before them. This ability is called the Avatar State, and in it, no Avatar is any weaker than their predecessors. The greatest feat we see any Avatar perform is when Avatar Kyoshi moves an entire island. By measuring the size of the island on a map of the Avatar world, I found that the island and surrounding oceanic crust took up about 0.4% of their planet’s surface. Assuming their planet is the same size as ours and has a similar composition, the island as well as the planet’s crust underneath it would have had a mass of about 2x10²⁰ kilograms. Looking at the scene where kyoshi moves the island and measuring distance relative to her height(generally assumed to be 7 feet), we can estimate that the island moves at a rate of 2.67 meters per second. Therefore, the island reached a kinetic energy of 7.1x10²⁰ joules. In the show, it takes her about 27 seconds to get the island to this speed. Increasing the island’s kinetic energy from zero to 7.1x10²⁰ joules in just 27 seconds would require Kyoshi to output 2.6x10¹⁹ watts of power. This is without even considering the enormous resistive forces she’d be fighting to push water and oceanic crust out of the way of the island as it moved. This power output means that the Avatar alone has a Kardashev number of 1.3.
Ultron (K=1.4)
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark is looking for a way to protect humanity from the threat of a future alien invasion. He envisions “a suit of armor around the world” in the form of an advanced artificial intelligence designed to keep peace. Tony creates this AI using alien technology he doesn’t fully understand, resulting in Ultron. Within moments of being born, Ultron scours the internet to learn about humanity and decides that the only way for them to achieve peace is to evolve. He believes himself to be the next stage of human evolution and decides to wipe out everyone else so the Earth can start anew. To accomplish this, he constructs a make-shift meteor to wipe out organic life on Earth. The meteor itself was only the size of a city, but we’ll assume that it would have been able to accomplish its goal if it had reached outer space and accelerated to a high enough speed.
An asteroid collision powerful enough to cause a mass extinction would likely release 2.9x10²⁶ joules of energy. You can get this number by plugging in the mass of a 2.5 kilometer asteroid — the kind that would typically cause mass extinctions — and the average velocity of meteors colliding with Earth into the formula for kinetic energy. It’s unclear how long it takes Ultron to build this device, but we’ll lowball and say he needed a full two weeks to construct it. This means Ultron would need to charge the rockets on the meteor with 2.4x10²⁰ watts of power. Therefore, Ultron’s Kardashev number would be 1.4.
A character like Ultron receiving such a high ranking on the Kardashev scale demonstrates how it is susceptible to major oversights in what it considers advanced. Ultron extrapolated his own flawed logic to an extreme. He came up with what he thought was a valid solution to a problem and didn’t take the time to actually openly discuss with other intelligent beings to see if they had helpful input. His ego blinded him to the idea that he wasn’t infallible. I argue for a civilization to be truly advanced, they need to consider the perspectives and well-being of people other than themselves.
The Dwarves of Nidavellir (K=1.8)
In Avengers: Infinity War, both Thor’s hammer Stormbreaker and the Infinity Gauntlet are forged using energy from Nidavellir, a neutron star enclosed in a container that looks similar to a Dyson Sphere. Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures that can be used to capture the full energy output of stars. An average neutron star is about a fourth as bright as our Sun, which means it has a power output of 9.6x10²³ watts. Being able to harness that much power would give the dwarves who built the forge a Kardashev number of 1.8.
In the film, it appears the forge is used primarily to provide weapons for races like the Asgardians. The first device from Nidavellir we learn about is Thor’s original hammer, Mjolnir, which is described as having no equal as a tool to build or as a weapon to destroy. The same can be said for the forge where Mjolnir was created. Though Nidavellir’s technology could have benefited many lives in its universe, it apparently became legendary for producing “the most powerful, horrific weapons to ever torment the universe.” We also learn in Thor: Ragnorak that Thor’s people were originally conquerors who laid waste to entire civilizations. Knowing about these atrocities, it’s hard to think of Thor’s people as civilized at all. Thor even states in The Avengers that despite feigning advancement, he and his people often display the same destructive behavior humans are capable of, only on a much larger scale. The story of Thor and his people teaches that simply being in a position of power doesn’t mean a civilization is inherently more advanced than any other.
That does it for our analysis of Type 0 and 1 civilizations. I’ll continue this series with more fictional civilizations in my next two blog posts.
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