 What makes cases of early preemption early is that there is some time before e happens at which the backup causal chain is cut. In our neuron diagram, at time t2, once a fails to fire, the backup b no longer has any hope of being a cause of e’s firing. So, if d had not fired (in violation of the neuron laws), e would not have fired. In the case of Billy and Suzy, once Billy tells Suzy he’s going to throw a rock at the window, the potential causal chain leading from Suzy’s grievance to the window’s shattering is cut. Now that’s she’s at home establishing an alibi, she has no hope of causing the window to shatter. Many counterfactual theories of causation appeal to this feature of early preemption in order to secure the verdict that c is a cause of e. (See, for instance, Ramachandran (1997, 1998), Ganeri et al. (1996, 1998), Yablo (2002, 2004), Hitchcock (2001a), Halpern and Pearl (2005), Woodward (2003), Halpern (2016a), Andreas and Günther (2020, 2021), and Weslake (ms.—see Other Internet Resources).)