What do we do if SETI is successful?

The decision to not respond should not be considered an option for the UN. They can get a week max to decide what to respond, but a response needs to be sent quick. Otherwise you can assume someone will take the choice away and respond anyway. That someone could be a nation not liking the UN discussions, or it could be a rogue scientists with access to the powerful radios. (I doubt most of us could respond if we wanted to - even if someone is willing to break all laws they are either protected by too much security or they are too expensive to afford - but I guarantee someone who works at such a facility is willing to risk responding if governments delay too long)

Even if the UN makes a respond expect someone else to send a different one at some point.

No individual is going to have the resources to respond to an alien signal unless it comes from Proxima Centari (very maybe) or not much further. No current earth broad would be easily recognizable from Proxima Centari with earth technology - a factor to consider when thinking about why entities aren't being easily detected. A powerful and very carefully aimed laser might work for greater distances but that wouldn't be something that can assembled in someone's garage.

But oppositely, if naturally defusing radio waves could be somehow detected from some further away location, the aliens would know already we're here and indeed lots about us so hand wringing about responding seems dumb there too.

The interlocutor on the other end experiencing time (or reasoning) at a different scale is an interesting case too, imagine a week feeling like centuries to them.

This! I asked JPL/Nasa friends, if we were at Alpha Centuri could we detect Earth signals. Answer: No, not currently.

Please correct me if you have data to the contrary.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted. Do others not realize how loud the sun is? Even trying our hardest to send messages it is like playing a rock concert next to a rocket. Loud, but even with the amps to 11 you're gonna just drown out in the background.

Not to mention that lightspeed is slow. Even to Proxima Centari it will take several years for that signal to reach its destination.

This is also the great challenge of SETI. It's quite possible we've already received alien signals but just can't differentiate them from all the noise. I know they say that in space no one can hear you scream, but the sun is screaming at the top of its lungs and it is a thing bigger than you can imagine.

They are correct. The sun is very very loud, and across a wide spectrum of radiowaves.

Unless we get a message from a triple star system. No replies for triple star systems, please.

Just started The Dark Forest, enjoyed Three Body immensely.

Given speed of light concerns. A week long delay is undetectably irrelevant.

Is the sun loud in radio frequencies too?

Yes. There's nothing particularly special about visible light

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radio_emission

It's also loud in the audio spectrum, just that doesn't travel well through space[0].

[0] https://www.discovermagazine.com/what-would-the-sun-sound-li...

Not even the Arecibo message?