A civilization does not have to fail in order for us not to detect any radio transmissions from it. We have been sending radio waves into the either for little more than 100 years, and I suspect that it will be less than 100 years more before we find a much better way to communicate.
My larger point is that there may be a short window of time where a civilization (as we understand it) may be detectable. They may go from the pre-industrial primitive to the G-d like in less than a thousand years.
Or, they could fail in a shorter amount of time.