*Reuploaded due to a massive influx of raider votes*
Big thanks to Jigglybone, Psychotobe, and Big Mark for giving their thoughts.
After 200+ revisions, it is finally complete. Turns out that I had to wait so long for crit because, well, there wasn't really anything to crit. With all that time I got, I decided to expand on this article and make it bigger and better than I ever thought it would be. That being said, I hope you enjoy.
Additional thanks: KaiserXI and DrXOUBLE D for submitting edits prior to this reupload.
IMAGE CREDIT:
Zdzisław Beksiński's art. - Rest in peace, Zdzisław Beksiński 4 February 1929 – 21 February 2005. He is the man responsible for the phenomenal art pieces showcased in this article. His art is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Black and white filters have been added to some of the images. Besides that, the rest have been untouched.
Kardashev scale footnote - Courtesy of Wikipedia
Great Filter footnote - Courtesy of Wikipedia
AREE footnote - Courtesy of Wikipedia
EDIT: This article was based off of Zdzisław's art to begin with, and as such, I am finding it incredibly difficult to find replacement images for some of the less-realistic or less-immersive ones featured in the article. (Mainly, RPC-840-4.) If you have any image suggestions (make sure they are NOT copyrighted), please put them in the replies of this post.