Superheroes + Stadium Disasters + The Evolution of Left of Bang
Profiles in Preparedness #11
While working with a client on their preparedness roadmap (and how that translated into their office's 2025 work plan) this week, I was reminded about how adaptable the "left of bang" concept is when it comes to preparedness priorities.
Preparation is a means of preventing small incidents from becoming disasters.
By starting with a clear definition of success for emergency operations center activations, the client identified, scoped, and prioritized 10 preparedness projects that will meaningfully enhance their city and county's ability to respond to and recover from incidents.
Their focus on improving their organization’s capabilities helps ensure that they (and their partners) have the resources and skills needed to respond quickly, confidently, and decisively to small and medium-sized incidents. This helps prevent everyday emergencies from escalating into larger disasters.
It’s a powerful reminder that true preparedness isn’t just about responding to crises—it’s about building the capacity to stop them from escalating in the first place.
We will be off next week but will see you again in 2025. I certainly hope that everyone has the opportunity at the end of the year to disconnect, recharge, and ready themselves for the year ahead.
With that, here are some articles we wrote or read this week and wanted to share.
The Evolution of Left of Bang (Version 2)
In the ten years since Left of Bang was published, the threats, hazards, and operating environments we face have changed significantly. As a result, the way organizations apply the left-of-bang concepts to prepare for an uncertain future has changed as well.
I spent some time this week updating our foundational article, which describes the concept's origins, evolution, and importance as we look ahead. Importantly, it now includes the outcomes and reasons we want to prepare ourselves: to prevent the incidents that can be and position our organization for success (and growth) during the incidents that can’t be stopped.
Over the years, we have heard countless stories about how the left-of-bang approach is being used in healthcare settings, cybersecurity, every facet of public safety, school districts, business operations, and many more. If you’d like to share your story, please add it to the article’s comments so others can carry your lessons forward.
A Few Things I Read This Week That Are Worth Sharing
Admittedly, this isn’t the most uplifting selection of articles I’ve shared, but each of them got me thinking about a different aspect of what it takes to prepare for an uncertain future.
Article | The Superhero Theory of Defense. Using primarily Avengers movies as the medium, this article highlights many different perspectives that people have about violence. As we consider the geopolitical environment that we live in (and can be impacted by) today, the framing of movies can be quite helpful in making the concepts relatable. But despite anyone’s personal perspective, the article offers this line in closing, "The very fact that you can hate America while being in America, taking advantage of the benefits of America is, in and of itself, a benefit of America. You don't have the same luxury in Russia or China." That is worth reflecting on.
Article | Six common factors in the school shooting at Abundant Life Christian. Learning how to learn from others is an increasingly important skill for organizations. As we saw in this week's school shooting in Wisconsin, there are differences (the demographics of the attacker) and similarities (the behaviors and pre-incident patterns) between this attack and the others we've seen both this year and in recent history. Grounding safety and security strategies in data and having objective planning assumptions are key to preparing for and preventing attacks like this. My hope is that school administrators are taking note.
Article | Guinea stadium disaster special report. On December 1st, somewhere between 56 and 150 people were killed trying to evacuate a stadium following a soccer game in Guinea. While it can feel easy to say that "this wouldn't happen here," this incident provides an opportunity to get beyond saying, "We can't let this happen again" by examining our own jurisdiction's readiness for similar events. Beyond the pre-match security lapses and the police response, the article highlights the challenge of reunification and victim tracking in a mass fatality incident. Chances are, there is room for improvement there. If the article is paywalled for you, you can also listen to a podcast on the article here.
Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways I work with clients:
Consulting Projects and Speaking Events. I help organizations prepare for an uncertain future with a variety of preparedness initiatives and left-of-bang-focused presentations.
Proactive Threat Recognition Training. Learn how to read the behaviors and establish baselines discussed in the book Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life in our online training courses.
Subscribe to the Left of Bang Academy: Access the tools and resources needed by emergency management and homeland security professionals to prepare their organizations for future disasters, disruptions, and crises.
If you’d like to learn more and see what is available for your organization, you can reach me at patrick@cp-journal.com or on LinkedIn.
Excellent as always, Patrick. Have you read "Antifragile" by Nassim Taleb? He discusses how stress can drive growth and improvement for systems that are designed properly (as opposed to fragile systems, which break down when stressed). I think you'd like it, as it dovetails which many of the things you recommend. For example, he points out that complexity inherently creates opportunity for failure, and that the wisdom of taking an action with an uncertain outcome can be assessed by estimating its asymmetric consequences (bigger upside than downside or vice versa).