When it comes to keeping valuable from prying digit , you may opt for a hiding place in your closet — or you may take advantage of some of the most safe vaults , safes , and other fort around the universe .
1. Fort Knox // Fort Knox, Kentucky
plan on damp intoFort Knox ? First , climb the four surround fences — two of which are electric — and then sneak past the armed sentinel line the perimeter . Be sure to annul the picture cameras , but do n’t waste clock time attempt to blast through the granite walls : They are 4 - feet thick and hold together by 750 tons of reinforcing blade . If you get past the armed precaution inside , plus the maze of locked room access , you ’ll probably be stopped by the 22 - ton vault door . Do n’t despair . The vault can be opened , but only if you find all the staff fellow member who bed a small piece of the compounding ( you ’ll need all of them , since nobody knows the whole thing . ) Once you get inside the vault , you ’ll have to break away into the littler vaults tucked within , then you may start taking the 5000 tons of gold bullion stored in there . And do be careful when you leave : 30,000 soldier from Fort Knox ’s military refugee camp will be anxiously wait you outside .
2. Svalbard Global Seed Vault // Spitsbergen, Norway
If Armageddon happens before long , any hope of bringing the world ’s crops back is buried 390 foot under a Nordic mountain . TheSvalbard Global Seed Vaulton the island of Spitsbergen currently domiciliate over 500,000 of the Earth ’s plant specie . The vault is 620 mile south of the North Pole and safeguarded by hundreds of miles of ocean , plus a duo thousandpolar bears . It ’s so recondite , it ’s resistant to a nuclear final solution , not to remark serious earthquakes . It also sit down 430 metrical foot above sea storey , good from any potential sea - spirit level ascent . The three semen vault lay behind four backbreaking sword doors . As long as the keys are n’t hidden under a doormat , our seeds should be secure fromDoomsday .
3. Cheyenne Mountain // Colorado
Cheyenne Mountain redefines the phrase “ job protection . ” employee shape behind two 25 - ton doors , which can withstand a 30 - megaton flack . To put that into perspective , Fat Man — the bomb shed on Nagasaki — would have to break loose 1429 times to crack the incoming . The offices there are buried 2000 feet into the mountain ’s granite , which is so far that air has to be pumped inside . That air , however , is the cleanest in the public . It is march by a commonwealth - of - the - art organization of chemical , biologic , and atomic filter . It ’s no curiosity why Cheyenne hosted the U.S. Missile Warning Center andNORADduring the Cold War .
4. Iron Mountain // Pennsylvania
What do the charred remains of Flight 93 , the original photo ofAlbert Einsteinsticking his tongue out , andThomas Edison ’s patent of invention for the lightheaded bulb have in common ? They ’re all stow under Iron Mountain . Two hundred pes below the ground , this retired limestone mine houses 1.7 million square feet deserving of vaults . The U.S. government is the freehanded tenant , and the identities of 95 pct of bank vault owner are secret . We do jazz that Warner Bros. , the Smithsonian Institution , and Corbis all have vaults there . Thousands of historical master recordings , exposure negatives , and original film reel live here . Iron Mountain is also dwelling house to Room 48 , a data shopping center back up some of America ’s biggest companies . Two waves of armed guards protect the entrance , and it ’s say they scrutinize guests so good that even theTSAwould be embarrassed .
5. Federal Reserve Bank of New York // New York, New York
block by from the bustle of Wall Street , 25 percent of the world ’s gold balance . At New York ’s Federal Reserve Bank , over $ 270 billion in amber bullion hides in a sunken three - story bunker . Most of the gold , however , is n’t American ; foreign nations own 98 percent of the stock . But that ’s because they trust the Fed vault . After all , it ’s 80 feet below earth , surrounded by solid rock and roll from all sides , and surveyed by a fleet of expert crack shot . And to top it off , the 540,000 bar of gold are locked behind a 90 - long ton brand door .
6. Granite Mountain // Utah
Since 1965 , Granite Mountain has safeguarded the Mormon Church ’s genealogical library . The program library is buried 600 foot beneath the mountain , where it hold 3.5 billion images — from census records to in-migration paper — on microfilm . The document were produce through agreements with archives , libraries , and churches from more than 100 countries . The archivists there duplicate and digitize old documents , which have been made public at internet site like familysearch.com and ancestry.com . The adeptness is naturally clime operate , but is also protected by armed guards and a 14 - ton , atomic - blast - repellent threshold . probability are , somewhere deep down , there ’s a record with your name on it .
7. Teikoku Bank // Hiroshima, Japan
When theEnola Gaydropped Little male child on Hiroshima , the metropolis and its people were obliterated . But business district , just a football field away from ground zero , the hurdle at Teikoku Bank sat undamaged . The exterior was fry but the interior was pristine . Mosler , the fellowship that built the safe , watch the incident as a great marketing chance . For the next decennium , it exploit the tragedy to bluster about the quality of its products . Safe ? Certainly . Tactful ? Not so much .
8. Bank of England Gold Vault // London, England
It look like something flat out ofIndiana Jones : the UK ’s largest gold vault — second in the human beings to the Fed in New York — stores 46,005,152 tons of amber . The bombproof door is unlocked via a sophisticated voice realization arrangement , aided by multiple three - invertebrate foot - long keys . ( Last I contain , they ca n’t be double at Lowes . ) The bank wo n’t say how heavy the door is or how deep down the burial vault is buried , but we do know it has more floor blank space than London ’s Tower 42 , a 47 - story building .
9. Bahnhof and WikiLeaks // Stockholm, Sweden
The U.S. State Department believably is n’t very fond of this safe house . Buried 100 foot beneath the streets of Stockholm , this previous nuclear bunker is notorious among data point centers . That ’s because the quickness , owned by the Swedish net provider Bahnhof , famously shelters the servers for WikiLeaks . Julian Assange ’s most precious information processing system shroud in this data trap . tuck behind a 1.5 - metrical unit steel doorway and driven by back - up generator that can go for hebdomad , WikiLeaks will keep breathing as long as it ’s here .
A edition of this story ran in 2010 ; it has been update for 2022 .
