I highly doubt that, I think the most likely 'Great Silence' is the vast energies required to go anywhere, the great filter stopping most civs from getting there (we've almost killed off earth and we're easily 300+ years from warp drives and interstellar travel).
I think the silence is just that: silence. We're it (right now).
Because of gravity, an entire civilization could live as long as we will on earth but on the right planet it could only take them 30 years per hour (like on interstellar where they were gone an hour on the planet, but off-planet 7 years passed.)
They could've started at the same time, but only be 10 years in, while we've transversed millenia.
Or could be exactly the same as how we evolved, except they did it 1 billion years ago, and died out 500 million years ago.
Top 3 contenders though for me for the fermi silence is: 1. Great Filter wins. 2. Time and Distance scales of space, and 3. We're living in a simulation. Aliens weren't part of the plan.
if alien life were out there, I don't think it'd just be content to hide out. I mean, look at our planet and the food chain, EVERY living thing competes for it's place on the food chain, and in the world. Extra-terrestrially I think we'd also compete w/ other races and see expansions.
If we lived 1 billion years, it's almost a certainty that we could colonize ALL of the milky way, and maybe other galaxies. Def. Andromeda since it'll merge with us soon enough.