10: Alcatraz of the Rockies
One of the most secure prison facilities in the entire world is the Administrative Maximum Federal
Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado. This place is known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies,
and it has been the home of some of the most infamous inmates ever,
one of the most recent being Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was convicted on drug trafficking
charges and sent to the inescapable jail. This facility is located inside a very
mountainous region of Colorado and is referred to as a supermax facility. Other
famous inmates include the Boston Marathon bomber, the Unabomber, and a conspirator involved in the
Oklahoma City bombings. Basically, anyone who commits acts of terrorism or kills people.
The ADX Florence, as it’s commonly called, opened back in 1994. It currently houses over 400 of the
FBI's most violent inmates. It also houses inmates who are likely to escape. This is because there is
no escaping from the ADX. Inmates like El Chapo get stuck in solitary confinement for about
23 hours a day and kept under camera surveillance. Since they've opened,
not a single person has escaped. Inmates living inside the ADX supermax prison
have almost no human contact. They’re only allowed outside for between one and two hours a day,
they're not allowed to have contact with other inmates, and everywhere is
reinforced with concrete and under constant surveillance. Plus, the prison is basically
built into the mountains like a fortress. Even if you escaped, there would be nowhere to run!
9: The Vatican Secret Archives
The Vatican Secret Archives has been one of the most secure buildings in the world
ever since it was separated from the Vatican Library back in the 17th century.
It has recently changed its name to the Vatican Apostolic Archives to try and remove some of the
mystery surrounding it, as those in charge insist there is nothing “secret” about their archives.
But of course, if you have a giant archive that nobody is allowed inside of, underneath
Vatican City, it's always going to be suspicious. Scholars have had limited access to the records
from the beginning. The archives are filled with state papers, transcriptions from ancient
trials including those of the Knights Templar, and other important documents and artifacts
acquired by the church over the centuries. In order to guard the secrets of the archives,
Vatican City even has its own special military known as the Swiss Guard who protect
everything inside the Vatican at all costs. For a few hundred years, not a single person
was allowed to see the documents stowed away inside the archives. However, that did eventually
change in 1881 when Pope Leo XIII allowed very limited access to historians. Then in 2002,
Pope John Paul II allowed researchers to access a handful of documents relating to the Vatican's
relationship with Germany. Basically, access has only been granted to the secret archives when
in the best interest of the church. No one is simply allowed to wander around in the archives!
8: Fort Knox When you think of secure buildings, you probably
think about Fort Knox. Fort Knox is located in Kentucky and has been the gold standard for
security around the world since it first opened as a gold vault back in the 1930s. The vault was
named after Henry Knox, the first United States secretary of war, and surprisingly, it only took a
year to build. It also only cost about $560,000 at the time, according to the United States Treasury.
And contrary to popular belief, it only holds about half of the gold in the United States.
Fort Knox is one of six facilities in the country protecting precious metals.
In the beginning, gold bars were transported to Kentucky aboard trains with help from
the United States Postal Service. That has changed dramatically throughout the years.
In fact, it's not even clear how gold gets to and from the facility, as that would be pretty silly
information to give to the public. What we do know is that Fort Knox’s walls contain at least 16,000
cubic feet (450 cubic meters) of granite and 750 tons of reinforced steel. There are also 670 tons
of structural steel and an underground complex of impenetrable layers and advanced technological
security. The vaults are built of steel plates encased in concrete, and the vault door itself
weighs at least 20 tons and is fully blast proof. Basically, Fort Knox is a literal fortress.
For decades, visitors were not even allowed inside Fort Knox. In 1974,
one delegation from Congress was allowed inside the facility, and the New York Times wrote that
there were 36,236 gold bars stacked from the floor to the ceiling, with nearly $2 billion
worth of gold inside a single room. Nobody was allowed back in the facility until 2017.
7: Bold Lane Car Park The Bold Lane Parksafe car park in England
is known as the safest parking lot in the entire world. No other parking lot has the
kind of stringent security measures as Bold Lane. According to the BBC, Bold Lane has enough space
for 440 cars and has never seen a case of theft or vandalism in all its years of operation.
What's truly fascinating about Bold Lane is that its designer began engineering the project after
his car window was smashed and his car stereo was stolen at the parking lot of an airport.
Angry, a man named Ken Wigley designed the best parking lot ever. It has sophisticated security
cameras that watch every inch of the facility, there are panic buttons, entry doors use barcoded
tickets to keep safety parameters up, and there are special sensors that will go off if a parked
car moves before it's supposed to. If one of the cars is tampered with or moved, a full lockdown
will ensue, shutting down the entire facility. It seems a little excessive, if you ask me!
They’re just cars, but I suppose if you have a very fancy vehicle, you’d want to store it here.
6: Iron Mountain Iron Mountain is exactly as secure as it sounds.
It's an underground vault built into the side of a mountain that stretches 220 feet (65m) below
ground. The entire complex is naturally protected by the mountain, and it was built inside of an
old limestone mine. Iron Mountain is used as an underground repository for records and valuable
information, and it encompasses an area of 1.8 million square feet (167,000 sq m). Iron Mountain
was designed to protect the most important information in the United States from humidity,
extreme temperatures, and natural disasters. There is 24/7 monitoring here, armed guards every
second of the day, and cutting-edge technology trusted by the highest levels of government.
But it doesn't stop just at security. The Iron Mountain complex has a constant temperature
optimal for storing valuable data on disks, tapes, and hard drives.
Even more, records are able to be shipped in and out of Iron Mountain for instant access.
The records stored here are able to be converted into digital information and sent to the owner,
and there are estimated to be about 2300 companies worldwide keeping their records
stored inside of Iron Mountain. There is one entrance protected by a steel gate that weighs
3 tons. The facility is fireproof, it's protected against flooding and lightning strikes, and the
only way in is with a verified identification that must be cleared by security personnel in advance.
If you have secret information, this is the place to store it!
5: The Doomsday Seed Vault One of the most fortified places
in the world is a facility located deep in the heart of an icy mountain far above
the Arctic Circle somewhere between mainland Norway and the North Pole. But this secretive
facility is not used for keeping prisoners or gold. It's for the future of humankind.
This is the doomsday seed vault, and it holds more than 930,000 varieties of different crops
representing 13,000 years of agricultural history. This is a giant safety deposit box full of seeds,
holding an almost complete collection of the agricultural biodiversity of the human race.
It's known as the Global Seed Vault, and it's located on the Svalbard Archipelago in Norway.
As you can probably imagine, this is not the kind of place you're going to stumble upon on your next
road trip. It is in the middle of absolute nowhere and is the farthest place to the north that you
can fly using a commercial airline. Nobody goes to this place, which makes it pretty secure already.
But the vault itself is also very difficult to enter. The vault has only one opening,
the majority of the seeds are kept inside of a concrete lair deep inside the mountain, and the
only vault currently in use is so cold that its door is often covered in a thick layer of ice.
If you really wanted to get into this vault, it would probably be easier than breaking into
Fort Knox. But after you stole a bag full of seeds, which have literally no monetary value,
you would be stuck fleeing across the high arctic, where you'd probably be eaten by a polar bear.
4: The DMZ One of the most militarized places
in the entire world is the border that separates the two Koreas. The DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone,
is a buffer that stretches from coast to coast across the entire Korean Peninsula,
155 miles long (250km) and just over one mile wide (1.6km). Each side is separated by razor wire,
traps that can blow up a tank, and some seriously heavy weaponry pointed at the opposite side.
But what a lot of people don't know about the DMZ between the Koreas is that it was a major
frontier in the Cold War fought between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Demilitarized
Zone was the end of the war when an armistice was signed in July of 1953. Nobody ever actually won
the war. The United Nation forces led by the United States to takedown the communist forces
in China and North Korea ended not with peace or with a treaty, but with what was essentially a
ceasefire – which is still going on today. You might be able to sneak across the land border
from Mexico into the United States or the other way around, but good luck moving from one Korea
to another. Every single inch of the DMZ is being watched by 160 guard posts on the northern side
and 60 guard posts on the southern side. Plus, the DMZ is littered with up to 970,000
landmines. You’d be blown up by underground explosives or shot by nervous, twitchy guards.
Would you ever visit North Korea? It’s so different from life in the West, but it’s
a bit dangerous if you aren’t extremely careful. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Then remember to subscribe to Talltanic if you haven’t already for more intense videos!
3: The Zombie-Proof House
There is a zombie-proof house in Poland the likes of which you have never seen. When it comes to
impenetrable fortresses, the Safe House in Warsaw is the best there is. It was designed
as a luxury mansion that could withstand even the worst zombie invasion. From the outside,
the house looks like some kind of closed factory. When closed, it's nothing more than a slate grey
box with no doors or windows surrounded by a couple of trees. However, the house does open up
to look like a completely normal mansion. It's just that with a single push of a button, every
window and entrance closes behind impenetrable concrete doors on hinges. The entire house
can be sealed at a moment's notice, so tightly that not a single zombie could ever get inside.
Plus, the zombie-proof house is surrounded by a zombie-proof outer shell. There is
even a retractable drawbridge for extra safety to move in and out of the home.
The lockdown system is operated by electronic engines that can be activated from anywhere
inside the house. If you're worried about a zombie apocalypse, this is the ultimate mansion for you!
2: Hollywood Hills Fortress Speaking of ultimate mansions,
there is a fortress located in the Hollywood Hills that recently went up for sale for $4 million.
What makes this fortress so valuable? Well, it’s been designed as one of the safest homes in the
world. The mansion sits on top of a grassy knoll, it's 7744 square feet (720 sq m),
it's earthquake proof, it has a wine cellar that doubles as a security bunker, the security system
is able to unleash disorienting fog spray through the house to cripple home intruders,
the windows are bulletproof, there's a helipad on the roof for quick getaway, and the walls
are reinforced steel. Not even a grenade could blow apart the exterior walls of this mansion.
Plus, the mansion is gorgeous. It's located in one of the richest neighborhoods in the United
States and offers spectacular views. It also doesn't use keys. The mansion uses biometric
recognition software, keeping out those pesky lockpickers! According to what the designer of
the house told Forbes Magazine, it was designed so that three generations can survive an apocalypse
inside of the house and become the new Adam and Eve. Of course, that’s assuming it’s
stocked with 100 years’ worth of food. 1: The Bank of England Gold Vault
The secret vaults beneath the Bank of England hold roughly $248 billion worth of gold,
according to a recent report from The Independent. That is about 1/5 of the entire gold stockpile
in the world, and it's hidden right underneath the streets of London.
Britain may not own as much gold as some other countries, but they definitely guard the bulk of
the global stockpile. And seeing as they have so much gold to keep an eye on, the security
measures are absolutely insane! Gold bars are kept on numbered shelves inside a concrete safe
deep under the ground. This underground safe was originally built in the 1930s and is still
accessed using a small collection of keys that are three feet (1m) long. The security experts
in charge of keeping the gold safe believe that using these big, complex keys is actually safer
than relying solely on electronic access. But wait, because that doesn't mean there
are no electric safeguards. The only way into the vault is by speaking a password into a microphone
that matches the visitor's voice with saved samples in the computer.
And these are just a few precautions that we know of. When you're guarding hundreds of billions of
dollars’ worth of gold, you can’t just tell the world everything about your security measures!
If you could sneak into just one of these places, which would you choose?
Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching. If you want more
great videos, be sure to subscribe to Talltanic!