By Barb McQuade

Dear Listener,

“Left of Boom” is a phrase I first heard during an FBI critical incident response exercise.

I was working as a national security prosecutor, and we had gathered in a large conference room in the FBI’s Detroit office to play out our roles in a hypothetical foreign terrorist attack. As we were presented with various terrifying scenarios, our goal, naturally, was to prevent an attack before it occurred. Up on the whiteboard someone had taken a marker and drawn a timeline. A big X, labeled “boom,” signified the moment of attack. Our job was to disrupt the plot before that moment, a spot on the timeline that would be somewhere “left of boom.”  To stop a plot left of boom is to prevent an attack and save lives.