Absorb the Buffer, Not the Boundary: A Pulse Certificate for Dual-Regime Deterrence

Strategic stability under compressed crisis cycles is usually framed as keeping a safety function away from its boundary. This paper argues that the relevant residue after a shock is not that boundary but an occupancy buffer: unresolved alerts, queued decisions, and unfinished dissipation. On an explicit three-state model of integrity, validated decision time, and buffer load, look-ahead switching on the safety function is a weaker law than absorption triggered by the disturbance and by leftover buffer. A clock hold after each pulse recovers most of the look-ahead advantage without watching the safety function at all. A pulse-integrated predictor minus a freeze remainder is a sufficient inner certificate on a generating set of bounded pulse trains, provided the class includes a minimum inter-pulse gap. Integrity is a second buffer; an optional floor on integrity is a sliding interlock, not a warning-layer gadget. The boundary of the safe set is the wrong surface to defend.