So are machine guns. And medieval catapults.Redstone said:
Of course nuclear weapons are a new, large, and unique threat by comparison to well over 99% of human history.
Nuclear fusion is just about the oldest and most natural process in the universe. The Sun is one gigantic (but incredibly mediocre in relative terms) continuously exploding nuclear bomb. The only difference is that it's 93 million miles away. There's nothing new about fusion and in fact the grass in your yard and all the plant life and therefore almost all life on this planet is literally nuclear powered. "Friendly-sounding" solar power is literally "terrifying" nuclear power that's just a long way away. It's a good thing. Very good.
We could definitely hurt ourselves grievously with those weapons, but at a galactic scale with all the claimed nonhuman intelligence species all around us who cares??? We're no threat to them and never will be and we'd just be one of countless planetary anthills to start with.
There's a weird contradictory narcissism about all this. There are so many self species-loathing people that clamor for the aliens to enlighten us or take our weapons away from us or force us to get along because we're so terrible, but at the same time for some reason also think that the rest of the hyper advanced creatures in this galaxy want to spend their time babysitting us like we're the center of everything.
You constantly hear "Whatever is out there they just have to be better than us!"
There's is no way to know that. We have one data point.. us. We might be the worst species in the galaxy, or we might be the best. We might be the most primitive or the most advanced. In all likelihood if there are others then the math would say we're average until proven otherwise. The argument that they just have to be better than us is a purely emotional argument. Those are the people at the top of the skyscraper in Independence Day that are celebrating the aliens' arrival when they get vaporized.