Ronald Lockett's brother David was taken prisoner in the opening days of the Persian Gulf War, a concern Lockett rendered visible: “Instinct for Survival was a picture about my brother. It was during the time of the Persian Gulf War. He was lost and we thought he was dead over there. My mother, she had a nervous breakdown... Once we got word that he was alive then I began to make this picture called Instinct for Survival. Later on, we got some bad news, that they hadn’t really found him over there, they made a mistake and later on they found him at a POW camp. Later on, when the war was over with, they freed him and he came home. That is basically where I got the idea.”