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Nature is full of weird creatures that you could use for inspiration for your aliens.

Parasites are great examples, and can control their host or become a part of their mate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2irXpAMBHkE

https://www.futurity.org/fanfin-seadevil-fish-1713022-2/

Planarians have incredible regeneration abilities, which we can use to make 3 headed worms.

https://youtu.be/roZeOBZAa2Q

We can even transplant a piece of worm to another, and grow a worm in a worm:

https://www.alamy.com/the-biological-bulletin-biology-zoology-biology-marine-biology-studies-on-transplantation-in-planaria-iqi-formation-of-a-secondary-pharynx-in-the-posterior-region-and-of-reversing-the-polarity-of-the-region-originally-anterior-to-the-level-of-the-graft-this-reversal-of-polarity-is-shown-by-the-develop-ment-of-a-new-pharynx-opposite-in-direction-to-the-original-pharynx-and-by-complete-reorganization-of-the-alimentary-tract-it-may-also-inhibit-head-formation-at-the-cut-surface-several-millimeters-fig-ii-p-dorotocephala-with-head-graft-developing-on-the-ventral-surface-of-the-host-image234673061.html

You could find a lot of other examples in a book like this one:

https://www.amazon.ca/Evolutionary-Wars-Three-Billion-Year-Arms-Race/dp/0716737752/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=evolution+arms+race&qid=1557509637&s=gateway&sr=8-11

I've got a recommendation. Robert Reed's Marrow!

https://www.amazon.com/Marrow-Robert-Reed/dp/0812566572

This is a quite a fun romp with a mysterious, large Neptune-sized planet ship that enters our galaxy from extra-galactic space. This vast ark is habitable both inside and out and hosts a vast array of humans and alien species in a transhuman era.

Marrow and its sequel, The Well of Stars is big-scale sci-fi. The descriptions of the pertinent BDO are both copious and detailed. Enjoy!

He has several other books on the subject. I am especially fond of his humorous book How to live on Mars. https://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Mars-Guidebook-Surviving/dp/0307407187/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

You might be interested in The High Frontier: An Easier Way - the authors use newer information which says rotations of ~6 RPM or below can be adapted to in a couple of hours, allowing for smaller habitats. One they postulate is a mere 112 meters in diameter.

Aurora is an awesome book.

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Ship is not made of O'neil cylinders. It is a double torus.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP5Z3W4

It takes it from now, to type 5 kardashev civilization (I added my own type 4 and 5, type 5 is one who survived the end of the universe somehow).

Including how we will fix things like education, healthcare, poverty, population, transportation, unemployment and even our own mortality, in our lifetime.

And then how we will actually get into space, which is NOT some economically/politically unattainable method which is normally proposed.

With rejuvenation (eternal youth) there's nothing stopping individuals saving up for their own SpaceX launch with a bare-bones vessel capable of making it to a nearby asteroid, dwarf planet or moon, with some low-tech mining equipment and a bio-replicator.

A bio-replicator is a machine consisting of engineered organisms which replaces a thousand tons of farmland by making nutrients directly from biological waste with solar energy from solar panels which is given to the organisms in one wavelength in a closed system where minimal energy is allowed to escape.

From then on its just a matter of time until you have mined enough and traded enough of what you mined with what others mined, until you have your own interstellar vessel.

[Tomorrowland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film%29), obviously. :)

Firestar could be Elon Musk's roadmap.

May i add suggest a mote in gods eye
https://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926/ref=nodl_

This is basically the plot of Neil Stephenson's Seveneves, but there we basically only had one year.

amazon.de has used one to sell for 40 bucks
https://www.amazon.de/Ai-No-Kusabi-Space-Between/dp/1569707820

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If you want to really do your homework, start with the primary source. The name of these structures comes from Gerald K. O'Neill, and his work The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.

I believe this book has been referenced at least once on the channel. I haven't read it myself, but you could do worse than starting there.

If "weapon of mass destruction" includes chemical or biological agents, then nearly 100% of the population can gain access to something one can classify as "a weapon of mass destruction" right now. Most of those things could "only" wipe out a small city. The Peshtigo fire killed hundreds of people. How many people have access to matches? If you think more than a match is needed, you can order up a home-arson kit on Amazon. If bio-weapons are more your style, there are open forums accessible to the BioCurious.

The reason it will be easier for someone to get their hands on these kinds of things in the future is because as we move up the Kardashev scale, people have access to more and more power. That's practically the definition of moving up the Kardashev scale. It's easy to think that technology that is designed to specifically kill people will be hard to get in the future, but what about dangerous things like cars? When everyone has a fusion plant in their house, how hard will it be to build a fusion bomb? And that's without considering things like bio-weapons and grey goo weapons. Some worry about grey goo happening by accident in the not to distant future. It isn't just likely that people in the future will have access to what we now call "weapons of mass destruction", it's inevitable. In other words, I don't just think there is some dangerous technology that will be as easy to acquire as sending an email, I think every technology developed will become that easy to acquire, eventually.

On the flip side, our ability to escape from or protect ourselves from bad stuff has also improved. Cars no longer kill more people than guns. Accidental bio-weapons (a.k.a. diseases) are at an all time low. Energy production causes less pollution per capita than ever, and continues to improve.

The question isn't, "will crazy people have access to seriously dangerous stuff?" the question is "will we be able to protect ourselves from the stuff crazy people will be able to get a hold of?" And eventually we have to ask "will we be able to protect ourselves from the stuff people do by accident?" Obviously people on this subreddit think we will (I'm pretty much in that camp too — I'm mostly playing devils advocate here) but I think you can't dismiss the possibility that as technology spirals into ever more powerful technology, we will be less and less able to escape from it. It's a race and I don't see a clear winner.