survivor types

As Marines train to deploy to war zones, there is daily discussion about how to detect and disarm the buried roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military researchers have found that two groups of personnel are particularly good at spotting anomalies: those with hunting backgrounds, who traipsed through the woods as youths looking to bag a deer or turkey; and those who grew up in tough urban neighborhoods, where it is often important to know what gang controls which block.

Personnel who fit neither category, often young men who grew up in the suburbs and developed a liking for video games, do not seem to have the depth perception and peripheral vision of the others, even if their eyesight is 20/20.

The odd thing about this is that it reflects the pop culture fears you see in portrayals of crazed rednecks and feral urbanites. One day the casts of The Hills Have Eyes and Assault on Precinct 13 will unite and destroy the suburbs.

I wonder how this maps on to the British army.

Comments

[Chris Williams]

Hypothesis: Royal Irish Regiment, or others with NI background, best at working this sort of thing out.

[Neil]

Re "unite and destroy the suburbs" - that's how Saturday nights used to feel in Weymouth whenever there was a ship in at Portland.

[ajay]

The Paras tend to recruit from the inner cities of the Midlands and Glasgow, so I should imagine they're probably pretty good. We don't really have a working-class hunting culture though; not many ghillies left for Lord Lovat to recruit these days.

[dsquared]

I think this boils down to "Those who have practiced doing something similar". And that's in as much as it isn't bollo entirely - since most Crip sets, and many other gangs, explicitly name themselves after streets, one doesn't exactly need to walk around looking for spoor and analysing graffiti to work out that 83rd street might be home to the Eight Tray Crips. A lot of things attributed to "military researchers" often suffer from the lack of peer review implicit in any research community that doesn't publish.

[ajay]

one doesn't exactly need to walk around looking for spoor and analysing graffiti to work out that 83rd street might be home to the Eight Tray Crips.

Empty chocolate wrappers, meanwhile, are a dead giveaway that you're in the territory of the Milk Tray Crips.

[Richard J]

And as for the After Eight Bloods...

[jamie]

A lot of things attributed to "military researchers" often suffer from the lack of peer review implicit in any research community that doesn't publish.

What got me was the suburbanization of either the military or the reporting. It's not as if situational awareness is some kind of freak human capability.