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Have you ever wondered if it’s really as tough as everyone says it is to get into Fort
Knox?
And what makes a place truly “secure” anyway?
Throughout history, mankind has worked with nature and its own ingenuity to create some
of the most fortified places on the planet.
They can be found all over the world and serve a wide range of unique and interesting purposes
that you might not expect.
Here are nine of the most fortified places on Earth.
When you think about a place so secure you’ll never get in, what is the first thing that
pops into your mind?
Well, Fort Knox was probably the first thing you thought of.
That’s because “Fort Knox” is synonymous with “a secure location” in pop culture.
Surprisingly, Fort Knox isn’t actually the name of the vault where the gold is stored,
that’s the United States Bullion Depository.
Fort Knox is a 109,000 acre Army post which is home to over twelve thousand people, the
bullion vault itself, and even a high school.
The grounds of the bullion depository are secured 24 hours a day by an array of CCTV
cameras, motion sensors and minefields.
If you could get past all that, you would still need to scale the surrounding electric
fences topped with barbed wire, get through the granite walls, and somehow open the twenty-five-ton
vault door.
The vault is guarded by the United States Mint Police, an elite force tasked with protecting
assets belonging to the United States Treasury and the US Mint.
If that wasn’t enough, there are around thirty thousand Army troops stationed at the
Fort Knox base.
So if you do decide to try and take the title of “the person that stole from Fort Knox,”
you better bring an army because you’ll be fighting one.
Gold bars aren’t the only treasures that have been stored behind that reinforced door
though.
In World War 2, both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were secured there for
protection.
Morphine and opium were even held there at one point, in case the US became isolated
from raw sources of opium.
It seems crazy that the government were hoarding drugs in a gold vault, but until synthetic
painkillers were invented, opiates were the only ones available.
I guess they didn’t like the idea of fighting a war without painkillers.
Despite the legacy of Fort Knox, it isn’t actually the largest depository of gold in
North America…
but we’ll get to that a bit later.
Instead of gold bars, what about golden plates?
Don’t have any of them laying around?
Well fear not, the Mormon Church have got you covered!
While not quite the golden pages of Joseph Smith, the microfilm reels and sheets of microfiche
stored in The Granite Mountain Records Vault have enough space on them to store over 4.5
billion pages of genealogical records.
Now that’s what you call a family album!
The vault itself is located one mile up Little Cottonwood Canyon, in Utah, and is built into
the side of the mountain.
Wide loading bays allow access to the tunnels leading into the rock face, giving way to
rooms deep inside the mountain.
It’s in these deep, secretive recesses that you find them.
Hundreds upon hundreds of rows of cabinets containing an unimaginable amount of family
history.
All the rooms are climate controlled to preserve the data, and each room is protected by heat
and motion sensors to detect any problems that could lead to damage of the records.
While it’s not as guarded as Fort Knox, the measures which the Mormon Church have
gone through to protect and preserve these records is simply amazing.
They even have a lab on site, ready to save and reproduce any records that have begun
to degrade.
The facility and its purpose are also relatively unknown to most people.
The church has gone to great lengths to keep the vault as secluded and secretive as possible,
sorry guys.
Photos of the site itself are extremely difficult to find.
If you’re ever wondering where you came from and ever use a genealogical database
to trace your ancestors, there’s a good chance documents stored in the Mormon Church’s
vault played a part in tracing your history.
Somewhere in the deep rolling hills of Pennsylvania, there lies an innocent winding road which
leads up to a remarkably out-of-place chain link fence.
If you keep going, you will eventually be stopped by some serious-looking security guards
carrying some equally serious-looking weaponry.
This is the point where you are either going to be told to “take a hike” or present
your papers in order to enter the highly-secure facility on the other side of the fence.
You’ve just found Iron Mountain.
This is a place where most of the vault owners are confidential, so you know there’s going
to be some serious security in keeping things locked away and hidden from prying eyes.
The facility takes advantage of a retired limestone mine, and effectively “moved in”
after the rocks moved out.
This provided a geologically secure, and cost-effective way to house an incredibly valuable storage
bunker.
The 220 vaults contain a variety of valuables from birth certificates to microfilm backing
up some extremely valuable documents.
These are the kind of images that the world couldn’t do without…
such as the original picture of Einstein sticking his tongue out.
As you wander around the facility, probably with an escort, you will notice just how large
it is.
The whole storage area is around 100 acres, and employs a team of 155 people working underground
to keep its contents maintained.
Deep within the facility lies a room which emits a low hum as you approach it.
No… it isn’t some kind of doomsday machine hidden along with the other secretive objects
stored here.
The low hum comes from the energy-efficient generators and cooling ducts that keep one
of the world’s most important data hives running smoothly.
This is the home of Room 48, a data centre used as a backup for some of America’s biggest
companies.
It isn’t the only data center humming away in the former mine, but one of five.
Room 48 is just the most well-known since it has some pretty clever energy-saving tricks
up its sleeve, giving it a 50% power advantage over almost every other data centre in the
country.
Whether it’s your family photos stored in a vault, or your cloud-storage business safely
backed up in room 48, your assets are definitely going to be safe in Iron Mountain.
One place that you’d probably never want to go to, even if you could, is the Korean
DMZ, or “de-militarized zone.”
Despite its name, it’s one of the most heavily militarized areas on the planet.
This no-man’s land stretches the 160 mile border between North and South Korea, and
is 2.5 miles wide.
Tall razor-wire fences, which are usually electrified, line each side of the no-man’s
land.
Listening posts, guard towers, and anti-tank barricades are dotted across the landscape
as far as the eye can see.
To top it all off, there are hundreds of thousands of active soldiers patrolling both sides,
ready for war at any moment.
If you do manage to evade the guards, scale the electric fences, dodge the landmines,
and avoid the automatic gun turrets, then you’ll probably still end up as the meal
of some wild animal.
Due to the uninhabitable nature of the dangerous no-man’s-land, the area has become something
of a nature reserve, where some extremely rare plants and animals have found their unlikely
home.
These endangered animals include the iconic red-crowned crane, and the majestic—but
dangerous—Siberian Tiger.
The DMZ was created as an armistice agreement to pacify the brutal Korean War.
Technically, both nations are still at war, which is fairly unnerving since North Korea
has since developed nuclear weapons and regularly threatens to use them if provoked.
That doesn’t mean everything has been peaceful though.
Between 1953 and 1999 around five hundred South Koreans, fifty US troops and two hundred
and fifty North Koreans have died in sporadic outbreaks of conflict within the highly militarized
zone.
Of the around 50,000 people that have defected from the North to the South, only a handful
have actually crossed the southern border, through the DMZ.
That goes to show just how fortified and dangerous the border really is… and how well it works.
Back in medieval times, people used moats and drawbridges to keep their annoying neighbors
away.
But one abbey took the idea of a moat a bit too far…
Mont Saint-Michel is a natural “island fortress.”
The outcrop was formed 525 million years ago, during the Cambrian period, and is made from
volcanic Leucogranite.
Over millions of years, the softer rock around it was worn away to leave the now 92 meter
high outcrop, towering high above the surrounding bay.
The abbey is tidally isolated, where at high tide, the surrounding marshes, lowlands and
land bridges are swallowed up into the watery depths, along with anything locked outside
the gates.
That could have been peasants who weren’t permitted to enter, or invading armies trying
to claim the Mont for themselves.
This natural process provided a fantastic deterrent against a siege, since they usually
lasted days to months, but the tide meant any army would only have a few hours to take
the fort, or they would lose their men, supplies, and siege equipment to the sea.
Even if you were determined enough to swim up to the island to try and get access, you’re
probably better off waiting for the tides and gates to lower, as Mont Saint Michel has
some pretty serious fortifications.
The entirety of the island is surrounded by a large wall with battlements, ready to repel
invaders.
The streets and passageways up to the monastery are very narrow and are flanked by elevated
walkways that are perfect for raining down arrows or boiling oil.
Basically, if you are trying to get to the top to check out the view, but you’re not
welcome…
you’re going to have a very bad time.
Mont Saint-Michel remained unconquered during the entirety of the Hundred Year War between
France and England.
Even a small garrison fended off a full attack by the English in 1433.
Several siege machines were abandoned by the English during the failed assault as the tides
closed in, and can still be seen today.
These days, there’s a bridge which gives people access from the mainland even at high
tide, but every 18 years or so, a “super tide” comes along, and last year, 2015,
in March, it temporarily submerged part of the bridge, making Mont Saint Michel a true
island fortress once more.
If you happen to find yourself surviving a disaster that wipes out most of the planet’s
crops, there’s no need to worry about starving.
You just have to take a quick trip down to your “local” doomsday seed vault and pick
up a packet or two.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is so fortified that it could survive the apocalypse... or
at least it should do, else the owners might want their money back.
The vault was designed to outlast almost any imaginable disaster ranging from extreme climate
change to a nuclear war.
Built on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen only 1300 kilometres from the North Pole,
the vault is about as isolated as a location can be without being inaccessible.
If you manage to fight your way through the local polar bears and reach the vault, you
will find a wedge-shaped hunk of concrete sticking out of an icy mountain.
Get past the heavy security and front doors and you enter a reinforced tunnel which burrows
120 metres into the solid rock.
The Svalbard Global seed vault serves as a highly secure backup for other seed vaults
around the world that are in less fortified locations.
The vault currently holds millions of seeds from thousands of crop species across the
world, secured in airtight aluminium packets and refrigerated at negative eighteen degrees
Celsius.
While it’s not the comfiest of places to spend your time, the conditions are perfect
for preserving most seed species indefinitely.
Because the facility was built in such a remote location, with such frigid conditions; even
if the power fails, the temperature would stabilize to about negative three degrees
Celsius, cold enough to keep some crucial seeds preserved for decades.
It may not be the most heavily guarded location on the planet, but a vault that could potentially
outlast the rest of humanity definitely earns the right to be on this list.
When a bunker used to be the North American Aerospace Command Centre, as well as spearheading
U.S Space Command missions, you know that it’s going to have some serious hardware
behind those heavy blast doors.
Buried six hundred metres under a granite mountain in Colorado Springs lies the Cheyenne
Mountain Complex, a massive military structure built in 1967 by the US Government to be a
central operations base.
The bunker was designed to withstand the most powerful weapons ever created, and is able
to survive a thirty megaton nuclear detonation within two kilometres, a blast that would
completely flatten a large metropolis like London or New York City.
That’s pretty impressive.
The main access tunnel is lined with a series of 25-ton blast doors, each with pressurized
compartments designed to filter out any nuclear, biological or chemical contaminants.
At the height of its operation, these checkpoints would have been heavily guarded, and only
those with the highest military clearance were able to pass.
The facility was fully self-contained, and provided living quarters for round-the-clock
operation.
Everything the base needed was provided or stored on site, with power generators, food
and water storage, as well as fuel reservoirs ensuring that the base could still operate
when cut off from the outside world.
This level of secrecy and security brought the base fame in pop culture, with conspiracy
theories and television shows like Stargate being based on the military complex.
The base actually acknowledged this and installed a seemingly “high security” door labelled
“Stargate Command” which led to a storage room for cleaning equipment.
Cheyenne Mountain has since been retired from its original command-center duties and is
now reserved for training and commercial communications use.
Though, fully operational or not, I would prefer to be standing inside the bunker in
an emergency than outside it, banging on the blast doors trying to get in.
I mentioned earlier that Fort Knox wasn’t the world’s leading stockpile of gold…
and that’s because that honour belongs to The Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
It’s the largest Federal Reserve Bank in America, and like the others, it holds an
incredible amount of cash, gold and other valuables.
Like most banks, there is a 24/7 quick response tactical assault team on standby for any sign
that the bank is being robbed.
The armed guards in and around the building go through tough training courses to spot
the telltale signs that give away someone who might be there attempting to make a bigger
withdrawal than they’re entitled to.
Past all the security and down a few flights of stairs lies the gold vault, protected by
a massive steel door with a multiple lock mechanism.
People aren’t even allowed inside the vault itself.
All interaction and movement of gold is done by robots carrying pallets.
I guess robots are the only thing that wouldn’t get gold fever being surrounded by tons of
shiny yellow metal.
The vault isn’t just buried underground, but dug into the very bedrock of lower Manhattan.
It actually sits at 80 feet below the street level.
So if you plan on digging your way in, it’s going to take a long… long time.
But that’s assuming one of the marksmen that patrol the perimeter of the building
doesn’t spot you before you even break through the concrete.
With the armed guards, security checks, the heavy vault doors and rock foundations, I’m
afraid the only way you’re going to see any gold, is if you own it.
The vault contained seven thousand tons of gold as of the last official inventory in
2011.
That’s far more than reported anywhere else in the world.
So if somebody does ever manage the impossible and break into that vault, they’re going
to have a tough time carrying it out.
When you picture a heavily fortified location, you probably think about bunkers, or vaults,
or even your wallet when it’s your turn to get the next round in…but probably not
boats.
Well, this isn’t any old boat.
The USS George H.W.
Bush is arguably the most fortified military position on the planet, despite…
well… not actually staying one place.
It’s one of ten Nimitz class Supercarriers in the United States Navy, and as well as
being almost impervious to attack, it’s one of the most formidable sights for an enemy
to see.
You sure as hell don’t want to be the reason why it’s arrived armed and ready for action.
At three hundred and thirty-two metres long and weighing around one hundred thousand tons
when fully loaded, it’s no surprise that its presence means business.
It’s capable of carrying 90 aircraft, including helicopters, and can launch one every twenty
seconds on offensive or defensive missions.
Capable of repelling entire navies of some countries by itself, a U.S Carrier Strike
Group, which works with the aircraft carrier, has multiple layers of state-of-the-art defense.
Dedicated Cruisers, Destroyers, and Frigates work together to defend the carrier from attack
by air and sea, whether the assailants are other ships or submarines.
The group works closely with advanced radar systems and electronic countermeasures to
spot enemies long before they are in range, and interfere with their capability to fight.
The aircraft carrier itself has an array of weaponry; from a number of surface-to-air
missile launchers that target enemy aircraft, to Phalanx weapons systems which lock on to
incoming missiles and shred them in a hail of bullets.
Even if something does make it all the way through the battlegroup, the swarms of advanced
aircraft, and the carrier’s point-defense guns, you would still need to get through
the two and a half inch thick Kevlar armor which protects the vital parts of the ship.
So yeah… unless you have a large army with some sophisticated weaponry, you probably
aren’t going to land a scratch.
There’s a fortified place for almost every situation, whether it’s surviving the end
of the world, hoarding your treasure, or repelling the British.
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