If a species is intelligent enough to collaborate together as nations and design ICBM's carrying one of the most powerful forces of the universe they will not stupidly eradicate themselves like apes.

Being at that technology level describes the extreme urge for life to prosper and expand and want to live. Even if for example the Cuban Missile Crisis went horribly awry by some crazy ruler and they started global nuclear war, even mass targeting of capitals attempting to eradicate life it would not extinct the world.

Personally, there's most likely around a 25,000 to 400,000 civilizations that are at around our level of intelligence in the universe right now, perhaps 500 or so in the milky way.

It's only a matter of time before we advance enough to explore them.

Why such a large fraction for the Milky Way?

The desire to posses nuclear weapons stems from fear, aggression, territoriality, and lust for power: primal emotions.

If Adolf Hitler had come to power during the Atomic Age, we might not be sitting here right now to talk about it.

a planetary catastrophe while humans inhabit only Earth

It is not out of the question that some calamity or social upheaval could temporarily set back our civilization as well. It's unlikely, but the possibility should not be ignored.

Also there is the difficulty of the development of complex life (eukaryotes and multi-cellular forms). This goes back to the issue of the Great Filter (it took nearly 4 billion years to occur on Earth).

A matter of time, and a bit of luck that we'll last that long and be willing to go. But I think we will. Our expansion into space will soon gain a lot of inertia. I believe this decade is the most critical point yet in the history of human spaceflight: it is the time we start opening space up to the masses. Where commercial enterprise leads, people follow. And thus old frontiers become new homes. This is an exciting time to be alive.

then it will probably allow for the formation of satellites.

It may take a long time since even if we find such a world it would not be easy to determine its atmospheric composition.

I am also highly skeptical towards this idea of finding intelligent life because the circumstances for humanity being here are also very unlikely, we really did get lucky.

For most of life's history there weren't even any macroscopic organisms. It may be that complex life, never mind intelligent life, is exceedingly rare. I would be surprised if we ever found other technical beings in the Milky Way.

in our current technological stage we haven't had any pole switching or terribly severe solar storms.

I still think there is intelligent life out there but most likely nowhere near us.

Good thing too, though a pole reversal may already be underway (there's another thread about it). And just imagine if the Carrington event happened today. Society would be set back by decades or more.

And if both were to happen at once we'd be thrown back by at least a century

At this point it doesn't matter as much what the government space programs are doing, or what their future might be. We are now crossing a threshold into a new era of spaceflight, and the momentum that has been built in the commercial space industry, combined with the forward thinking and beneficent outlook of some of its key players, ensures that even if NASA, ESA, Roscosmos and the rest go under, humanity will still leave Earth. That said, I hope that the government space programs continue to exist and that they prosper in the future.

As for private industry I don't know why i think like this, but I imagine a business basically holding the governing bodies of the world hostage for large sums of money to deflect/move the object.

Personally though I'd like to see more cooperation between nations space programs and private space industries.

Also, international cooperation between gov't space agencies has been increasing as well, though not very quickly and not under the best of circumstances (largely driven by budget cuts).

I think that the odds of that ever happening would be extremely remote

They'd make much more money by enthusiastically helping than they would by price gouging.

Is there a black cat in a dark room?

Maybe something like, you only see one fish in the ocean. Are there more fish?