Type 0, 1, 2, & 3 Civilizations

In the book entitled, "Hyperspace", theorical physicist Michio Kaku mentioned about four kinds of civilizations:

Type 0 This civilization harnesses the crudest forms of energy from a planet.

Type I This civilization harnesses the energy output of an entire planet.

Type II This civilization harnesses the energy output of a star, and generates about 10 billion times the energy output of a Type I civilization.

Type III This civilization harnesses the energy output of a galaxy, or about 10 billion time the energy output of a Type II civilization.

A Type I civilization would be able to manipulate truly planetary energies. They might, for example, control or modify their weather. They would have the power to manipulate planetary phenomena, such as hurricanes, which can release the energy of hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Perhaps volcanoes or even earthquakes may be altered by such a civilization.

A Type II civilization may resemble the Federation of Planets seen on the TV program Star Trek (which is capable of igniting stars and has colonized a tiny fraction of the near-by stars in the galaxy). A Type II civilization might be able to manipulate the power of solar flares.

A Type III civilization may resemble the Borg, or perhaps the Empire found in the Star Wars saga. They have colonized the galaxy itself, extracting energy from hundreds of billions of stars.

By contrast, we are a Type 0 civilization, which extracts its energy from dead plants (oil and coal). Growing at the average rate of about 3% per year, however, one may calculate that our own civilization may attain Type I status in about 100-200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about 100,000 to a million years. These time scales are insignificant when compared with the universe itself. ( Between 11.2 billion and 20 billion years old. )

On this scale, one may now rank the different propulsion systems available to different types of civilizations:

Type 0 Chemical rockets ; [[Ionization_potential]Ion] engines]] ; Fission power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission) ; EM propulsion (rail guns) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun)

Type I Ram-jet fusion engines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power) ; Photonic drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonics)

Type II Antimatter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter) drive; Von Neumann probes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanking_replicator)

Type III Planck energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_energy) propulsion

This was orginally posted at "www.physicsforms.com". Edited the orginial post.

Further reading

• Diamond, 2005, Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive, Allen Lane, London.
• Fernández-Armesto, 2001, Civilizations, Free Press, London.