Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [56]
With this simple test, then, Morgan could potentially save soldiers the trouble of even trying to endure the Special Forces selection process. “If you just screened those people out at the beginning, it would save the Army millions of dollars,” he says. But the generals aren’t keen on that idea for philosophical reasons. “The Army doesn’t like the idea that someone might be prevented from doing something he or she really wants to do,” Morgan says. So today, everyone still gets to try out for the Special Forces, regardless of chemistry.
Still, another mystery remained: if these individuals were different before they joined the Special Forces, then how did they get that way? Were they born resilient? Or had they all undergone some kind of childhood experience to make them that way?
Whenever a psychologist (or anyone else, for that matter) tries to identify causality, things can go badly. Nature and nurture just don’t divide cleanly, no matter how much we want them to. Both are intertwined, like strands of DNA. And still, we want to know. Even if we can’t entirely isolate nature or nurture, can’t we at least say which one matters more? Even a little bit?
When all else fails, there is one last way to find out. But it is a long shot. Subjects are few and far between. If it works, however, the twin study is a lovely thing to behold—as elegant and pure as pi.
The Thompson Twins
Even now, it’s hard to tell Jerry and Terry Thompson apart. They stopped dressing the same in the seventh grade, but they still sometimes meet somewhere and realize they’re wearing matching outfits. The identical twins live in Ardmore, Oklahoma, about fourteen miles away from each other. They both drive Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks. When I spoke to Jerry one summer Friday, he was waiting for Terry to help him pull his tractor out of the mud.
But the Thompson brothers have less in common outside of their DNA. “You can talk to us just briefly and know right off we’re two different personalities,” Jerry says. “I’m an on-time guy; he’s a late guy. I’m real picky about the inside of my truck; he throws his trash down on his floorboard.” Growing up in Southern California in a family of six children, they battled for supremacy. Their father bought them boxing gloves when they were two years old, and they’re still going at it. “He pushes my buttons,” Jerry says about Terry. “When we fight, he always lets me know how intelligent he is. He’s eight minutes older than I am, and you can tell ’cause he’s got his master’s, and I have a little associate’s degree.” Jerry is retired now, while Terry runs a business making and selling jerky.
Another difference between the brothers is that Jerry went to Vietnam. They both joined the Marine Corps after high school. “It was more or less to fight for our country,” Jerry says. “We had military on both sides of the family, so I couldn’t have been a draft dodger, and I didn’t really know enough about war to be one anyway.” But only Jerry was sent to war. He arrived in Vietnam on June 3, 1970. Seven weeks later, he got caught in an ambush. He was shot in his right arm and riddled with shrapnel. “They threw one grenade at me and blew me into the air, and then another blew me backwards.” He spent five weeks recovering and received a Purple Heart. Then he went back into combat. “You don’t know how much of an animal you turn into,” he says. “I cut some ears off and scalped some dudes.”
Jerry was sent back the States nine months after he left. His ear collection got confiscated at the Da Nang airport. When he got back to California, he moved home. But his parents couldn’t understand him. “I was in a different world when I came home.” He quit a series of jobs and then dropped out of college, too. Then he got married and divorced. “I couldn’t communicate with her or nobody else,” Jerry says. “I’m still sorta that way. That’s probably why I live out in the country and stay to myself. I got sorta numb.”