Awful that such a thing might have happened, but nice we are considering it, thanks for posting!

What needs to be done, if it turns out to be true, is to look into why it happened, so as to maybe avoid it happening again.

What were the drivers in that obviously failed attempt to attain civilisation?

My money would be on it being profit. Without any requirement for that, then there is no requirement for strife.

Maybe they reached the same point as we have now, with one part of humanity seeing the benefits of plugging into the infinite wealth source that is the sun, thereby rendering all profit driven endeavour obsolete, and the other, hell-bent on preserving the ideas of controlled scarcity.

After all, isn’t a nuclear explosion the ultimate form of controlling scarcity?