Our current level of technology and intelligence is sufficient to colonize the galaxy if given enough time. We are capable of leaving our world, successfully landing on another, harvesting and utilizing resources found out there, and putting objects outside our solar system. That plus time (maybe 10,000 years to really get the ball rolling) is all that's really needed to put us on that trajectory.<br><br>Assuming we don't destroy ourselves for just long enough to spread our selves over enough distance to make all humans dying because of other humans practically impossible. We wouldn't even need the social organization that now seems necessary to pull it off. Individual pockets and factions of humanity could do it independently of each other.<br><br>My point is there seems to be this assumption that an intelligent and technological species roaming the galaxy is somehow going to be far more advanced than us in technology and intelligence. So much so that we are as ants or household pets to them. They could be only as smart and only as advanced as us. But just have more stuff to do it all with because they've been at it for a lot longer. <br><br>Heck they could even be dumber than us with less technological capability. If their technology was just good enough to get out there and they were barely smart enough to pull it off (assuming let's say that there circumstances for accomplishing it were a lot easier than ours. Like a home world with significantly less gravity and a star that was a lot more long lived and stable, in star system that wasn't so cluttered). They could be out there doing it on the cheap and without any particular goal but long term survival in mind. There could be colony entities out there where any individual is a dummy that have a really high mortality rate but their just that good at brute forcing positive out comes and breeding. It just has to technically work. They doesn't have to be particularly good at it and neither do we.