Why Inbreeding and Percolation Explain the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

I recently connected Geoffrey Landis' percolation theory to Lindsay Nikole's work on cheetah genetics to solve the Fermi Paradox. Interstellar colonization creates severe genetic bottlenecks, much like the catastrophes that nearly wiped out cheetahs. As colonies branch out, genetic diversity plummets, leaving new populations vulnerable to extinction. This biological fragility likely causes expansion to terminate long before filling the galaxy.

"Extend the sequence far enough and you probably get populations that are functionally so closely related you could do skin grafts between random individuals."