Throughout The Dark Forest, the characters operate under the assumption that the Trisolar fleet will arrive, destroy humanity and supplant them as the residents of Earth. In this scenario, mutually assured destruction becomes a means for survival because of Luo Ji’s perception of the universe:

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost [...] If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people (484).

Luo Ji believes that each civilization in the universe survives by staying hidden. If they find another civilization, they must perceive it as a threat to themselves and destroy it. This theory, which exists in science, draws on ideas of resource management and Neorealism as a way to consider competitive survival of infinitely expanding organisms in the face of finite, and potentially diminishing, resources. The idea presents the concept of survival as a zero-sum game between two civilizations.

Instead, the novel turns this premise on its head, so that the competitive survival of civilizations becomes a cooperative force.