By the time a political narrative becomes a communications crisis, its most important features may already be visible. Martin Brezina reconstructs a real case from a marginal signal detected during its first 72 hours, through activist amplification and official response, to its later adoption by an existing political network. Using timestamped posts, early-warning data and content-sharing traces, he shows what communicators could genuinely have known at each stage, and offers a practical framework for deciding when to monitor, intervene or respond.