"...2525"

Earth ‘will’ abide.  So we’re no threat. Earth will just right herself. In some tens of million years, see future earth above, you’d never know we were ever here. In a 100 Million+ years the scars humans leave, quarries tunnels city traces will be very faded.  The half-life of most of the radio-active materials we fooled with will have cooled off. Tho’ there are some artificial exotic radiated materials with half-lives that border the hundred million mark. 

If you were an Exo-geologist from another star, say 60,000,000 years from now. You’d be surprised and intrigued at the radiation readings you were getting. The source is clearly artificial and has been in this deposit for tens of millions of years. Like the Voyager probes sailing out to the stars this find would say there was an ancient intelligent species that once lived on this world. This at long last would be our “First Contact”.

There’s life out there plenty of it. Mostly microbes or at best fish folks. These happily swimming along dreaming fish poetry. Inquisitive builder sorts like us are likely very few. Timing is our problem. We tend to miss each other by many by tens of eons. A moment to eternity, but critical to us. 

If we ever go to the stars we’ll find their traces, and eventually yet others will find ours. First Contacts will almost entirely be like this. Except for meeting those contemplative fish poets. This is just as well. You can’t have space battles with fossils or poets.