Here the trick is that a planet-scale barrier is needed, since we need to defend against tipping our ecosystem into chaos. If we're Type II, then we could theoretically just let the earth get whacked and restart using nearby systems to seed it. Kinda funny how a disaster stops being as terrible once you have backups:
Type 0: extinction
Type 1: mega-scale engineering effort to block GRB
Here the trick is that a planet-scale barrier is needed, since we need to defend against tipping our ecosystem into chaos. If we're Type II, then we could theoretically just let the earth get whacked and restart using nearby systems to seed it. Kinda funny how a disaster stops being as terrible once you have backups:
Type 0: extinction
Type 1: mega-scale engineering effort to block GRB
Type 2: start over from scratch easily
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Theoretical_exa...