[Dragonkid11]

Originally Posted by grevierr

Philosophically, we are ALL dead men walking. Johnny Walked.

Spoiler for Science:

How can inert materials create giga-joules of coherent light energy, nuclear fission, and 100,000 tons machinery? If its possible for us to create it, its possible for it to be created biologically. Its all from the same basic building blocks in the beginning. The universe is large and strange. Look at humans for example.

As for natural phenomena, referring from the NASA hand book of "bad things to encounter in space", a comet storm would be worst than 36mm depleted uranium rounds, and planets which are close to the sun or are young/old and unstable would have the energy effects of a nuclear explosion upon their surface on a constant occurrence. Planetary bodies with lower atmospheric content than earth would have constant bombardment by meteors, each would have the energy of a multi kilo ton nuke.

If I were to use Von Neumann's plan and send out self-replicating space probes, i would definitely include plans for worst case scenarios, and give the AI adaptive behavior programming against what they might encounter, with an exclusion critirial that it is not to recognize itself as an living intelligent being, according to one of the theories that an living being has to be
1) Self-sufficient,
2) Self-replicating,
3) Self-aware.
This is to prevent an Terminator scenario where the machines think they are alive and are self-aware. Too bad for any intelligent crystals they might encounter, we need our jewelry and computer parts.

Now swap that around and you get BETAs... which have traveled across space for an untold amount of time, quite possibly outliving their creators.

Spoiler for MLA-Sumika:

Your explanation is perfect but that still didn't explain the tentacle rape part