9 of the World’s Most Ridiculously Secure Safes and Vaults

World’s Most Ridiculously Secure Safes and Vaults

1. Fort Knox
Plan on breaking into Fort Knox? First, climb the four surrounding fences—two of which are electric—and then sneak past the armed sentinels lining the perimeter. Be sure to avoid the video cameras. Don’t waste time trying to blast through the granite walls—they are four feet thick and held together by 750 tons of reinforcing steel. If you get past the armed guards inside, plus the maze of locked doors, you’ll probably be stopped by the 22-ton vault door. Don’t despair. The vault can be opened, but only if you find all the staff members who know a small slice of the combination (you’ll need all of them, since nobody knows the whole thing.) Once you get inside the vault, you’ll have to break into the smaller vaults tucked inside, then you can start taking the 5000 tons of gold bullion stored in there. And do be careful when you leave: 30,000 soldiers from Fort Knox’s military camp will be anxiously awaiting you outside.

2. Svalbard Global Seed Vault
If Armageddon happens soon, any hope of bringing the world’s crops back is buried 390 feet under a Nordic mountain. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen currently houses over 500,000 of the world’s plant species. The vault is 620 miles south of the North Pole and safeguarded by hundreds of miles of ocean, plus a couple thousand polar bears. It’s so deep, it’s resistant to a nuclear holocaust, not to mention severe earthquakes. It also sits 430 feet above sea level, safe from any possible sea-level rise. The three seed vaults lay behind four heavy steel doors. As long as the keys aren’t hidden under a doormat, our seeds should be safe from Doomsday.

Now these are my favourite ones.
Bank of England Gold Vault.

8. Bank of England Gold vault.
It looks like something straight out of Indiana Jones: the UK’s largest gold vault—second in the world to the Fed in New York—stores 4,600 5152 tons of gold. The bombproof door is unlocked via a sophisticated voice recognition system, aided by multiple three-foot-long keys. (Last I checked, they can’t be duplicated at Lowes.) The bank won’t say how heavy the door is or how deep down the vault is buried, but we do know it has more floor space than London’s Tower 42, a 47-story building.

Swedish internet servers, hosting Wikileaks servers!!

9. Bahnhof and WikiLeaks in Stockholm
The US State Department probably isn’t very fond of this safe house. Buried 100 feet beneath the streets of Stockholm, this old nuclear bunker is the gadfly of all data centers. That’s because the facility, owned by the Swedish internet provider Bahnhof, famously shelters the servers for WikiLeaks. Julian Assange’s most precious computers hide in this data bunker. Tucked behind a 1.5-foot steel door and driven by back-up generators that can go for weeks, WikiLeaks will keep breathing as long as it’s here.

How awesome are these? I bet the US government would LOVE to get their hands on the wikileaks servers in all their physicality! Check out the rest here.

Surprisingly enough, you'll find that most commercial data centres are also built like fortresses.

Back in 1980 I was employed as a demolition worker in London. We demolished a Nat West bank in Threadneedle street. There were some really big under ground vaults with massive doors and gates to get into them. How ever one of the side doors which led to the street and was poorly secured. Also led to a stair well whch went right up to the roof. If you went down one flight of steps and then knocked a hole in the wall (red bricks) It led you right into the biggest vault they had in the bank. Which you had to go through metal gates to get to then of course you had the vault door. Which was a big stainless steel door. I was amazed at the security and it could all be by passed. By taking out a couple of red bricks in a stair well.

These are awesome dude!..

We know were the aliens will be heading

Wow, the Bank of England gold....

It makes me think that all the apparent 'rich' people I know arn't actually rich at all, they just have numbers on a piece of paper or an online statement.... That's about as safe as a chocolate teapot...

Now, to own some of the gold in that vault

According to the "world gold council" the US has 8,133 tons of gold. Compare that to the gold rich United Kingdom with 310 tons and we see how large of a number 8k really is.

We don't even know if there is any gold in the vault at Fort Knox. Wish we could actually audit Fort Knox and get some good pictures of the gold and confirm if there actually is any gold in there.

Anyone know what those posters are in the bank of England vault?

Originally posted by METACOMET
We don't even know if there is any gold in the vault at Fort Knox. According to the "world gold council" the US has 8,133 tons of gold. Compare that to the gold rich United Kingdom with 310 tons and we see how large of a number 8k really is.

Wish we could actually audit Fort Knox and get some good pictures of the gold and confirm if there actually is any gold in there.

Anyone know what those posters are in the bank of England vault?

edit on 21-7-2012 by METACOMET because: (no reason given)

I wondered about those posters myself... is it normal to have art-work in a vault?!

The walls containing the posters are also a different colour to the other walls... and the pillars are all different colours... I don't know, it looks like it's been edited somehow.... but I'm tired, maybe it's just me...

Smoke and mirrors.

Security systems like these can usually be broken into in a matter of minutes by some creative thinking and simple physics.

We become increasingly reliant on technology to house our valuables, but what happens when the SHTF? No more voice recognition or security codes. We default back to elbow grease.

There's ALWAYS an easy way in, basically a trojan horse, just in case.

The only security worth a damn is men with guns. They're unpredictable and can reason out a situation.

i have been to iron mountain #4

see the link to the thread i made in my sig.