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It doesn’t matter how good you are, or how much criminal expertise the crack-team you
put together has, there are still some places a person just cannot get into. Maybe you want
to break in to the Svalbard International Seed Vault. First you’d have to get to a
remote island in the Arctic circle and then get past motion detectors, blast proof doors
and a meter thick steel reinforced wall. And all for some seeds. Or maybe you want to get
your hands on the 4,600 tons of gold in the Bank of England gold vault. Well, bombs wouldn’t
do much against the 8 foot thick walls,, and if you want to get in through the gigantic
main doors you’ll need a set of three-feet long keys. But to even get that far you’ll
need to get past a state of the art security system.
It’s not going to happen, at least, we don’t think it will, but so-called impossible crimes
have been committed before and another may surprise us. But what about the USA’s Fort
Knox, a place that has become a byword for security. You’d be richer than you could
imagine if you could get away with the loot, but how on Earth would you go about the heist?
Well, first of all you should know what’s in there.
According to the Bureau of the Fiscal Reserve in 2018 there was 147,341,858.382 ounces of
gold kept in Fort Knox. That’s around 4,177,071 kilos. Most of that is in the form of gold
bars and if you got your hands on it you could end up with around $200 trillion dollars at
the price of gold today. Of course you’d probably crash the gold market trying to sell
off that much, but let’s just say you’d be set for life.
$200 trillion worth of gold sounds like a lot, and it is, but, according to the United
States Mint this isn’t even close the largest amount that has been stored there. The most
gold the vault has held was in 1941 when it had over four times as much at 649.6 million
ounces. That’s around 18 million kilos give or take. Regardless of how many hundreds of
millions of ounces of gold are in the vault, you’re likely not going to be able to get
it all out of there at once. You’ll probably be limited to as much as you can get into
the back of your trucks. U.S. law states that the most weight the biggest tandem semi-trucks
can carry is 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg), so let’s just say you have one of those. Obviously
if you’re pulling off the biggest gold heist in history, you’re not that worried about
breaking the law concerning carrying too heavy of a load, but it’s likely the law is in
place for a good reason. You don’t want any accidents during your heist or your truck
breaking down, and you definitely don’t want to get pulled over for carrying a too
heavy load. We just checked today’s gold price per kilo and it was about $43,000. That
means with a full load you’d have a legal value of $1,548,000,000. We think that’s
enough; you don’t want to be greedy afterall.
Ok, now you’ve worked out the truck and how much you’ll get away with, but how do
you fill it up? We know this can’t be a one man operation, there’s just too much
weight to move. The U.S. mint says that usually each bar of gold measures 7 inches x 3 and
5/8 inches x 1 and 3/4 inches and weighs approximately 27.5 pounds (about 12.5 kilos). Heavy, but
still light enough that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for the average adult to move
around. But even with a good team and maybe some industrial carts you have in your truck,
it would still take a fair amount of time to fill up, since your truck can hold almost
3,000 bars. Nothing you can’t handle though, you have your A-Team after all, consisting
of you, your buddy, your other buddy, and a couple of guys you met at a concert last
month.
Ok, truck, carts, friends, big swole muscles ready to lift - now it’s time to figure
out how to actually get inside.
First, you’ll have to break some bad news to the boys. Since the vault started storing
gold in 1937, no one has ever broken into it. No one has even tried, because, well,
it just seems so impossible.
For starters, the vault is located on a military base, hence the name “Fort” Knox. There
are literally thousands of people living on the base,and it’s huge, measuring 109,000
acres (170 square miles, of 441 km²). At any given time around 30,000 soldiers might
be stationed either on or close to the base along with plenty of tanks, armored personnel
carriers and military attack helicopters. So you’ll have to get past them, as well
as many heavily armed Mint Police, just to get to the depository. You should also know
that the building where the vault is located, is totally out of bounds. There’s an extremely
rigorous process to vet anyone coming to the vault. Absolutely no one is allowed to just
show up and waltz in, no matter how important, no matter how good their documentation is,
not even the President of the United States.
So let’s be honest, you’re never getting past the thousands of military personnel,
but let’s just say for the sake of fun that you and your team have an ace in the hole.
You have used mini drones that can bypass detection to fly all over the base and spray
a very powerful chemical agent in the air that causes anyone who breathes it in to become
unconscious for quite some time. Again, we know this is a total fantasy but let’s just
pretend you’re a rogue nerve agent scientist that has developed the perfect knockout gas.
You now at least have the opportunity to get your truck close to the building housing the
vault, but oops, it’s surrounded by ten foot high electrified fences, but that’s
not a big problem because you have special cutters. Also, now that you are close, even
though everyone in the vicinity is knocked out, the radar is still active, and what that
radar catches will be sent back to other bases. But let’s just say you have managed to block
the radar signals, because you met a guy in a bar the other month who did a stint at Area
51 and he knows all about jamming signals.
Radar, electric fences, getting past that is heist 101 class stuff. The radar was the
hard part, and the fences, even the electric ones, as we said you can easily get past.
But now another problem has arisen, because that pretty lawn around the depository is
littered with landmines. Okay, so you had to Google “How to get through a minefield”
and you were pleasantly surprised to find lots of, hmm, experts. They told you to get
ahold of a metal detector and mark your path as you go. Just in case though, you have some
of those huge funny-looking military foam boots to spread your weight over a given surface.
How did you get them? Well, let’s just say you know a guy who knows a guy. You plan your
route, marking your way with little flags, and that’s the track you will use with your
gold-filled carts.
You are finally at the building, thankfully with all of your limbs still intact, and you
are now well aware that it is filled with armed mint police. Time to get out the gas
masks and fill that place with your special go-to-sleep chemical concoction. After a few
minutes filling the building you are pretty sure they are in La La Land. If the outer
door is locked, no problem, this door you can blast through. It will be the easiest
door of the day. Inside you have to get to the vaults at the bottom of the building,
and this is how they have been described “A two level steel and concrete vault that is
divided into compartments… The vault casing is constructed of steel plates, steel I-beams
and steel cylinders laced with hoop bands and encased in concrete.” The door itself
is said to weigh 20 tons. You cannot blast through this door, and it takes a number of
combinations to open it and no one person in the world has the complete combination.
In fact, all the different people who share some knowledge of how to get in all have a
set of different instructions. You would need to know who all these people are and get them
all to tell you the truth.
Luckily, you met a hacker the other month who has spent years hacking military databases
and especially anyone even remotely concerned with the vault and its security. Prior to
your heist you gained knowledge of these people, to the extent that you know what aftershave
they use and who their favorite niece is. You have kidnapped these people and are now
presently showing them live feeds of their most loved family members, including their
beloved grandparents, cherished family pets, staring down the barrel of your buddy’s
gun. Violence is not your style, but it was the only way you could get through those doors.
They reluctantly each give up their part of the combination and the massive doors swing
open.
What you see in front of you is just what The New York Times saw when it became the
only media outlet ever to get a peek inside the vault. It said this, “Stacked from the
floor 8 feet to the ceiling in a vault 6 feet wide and 12 feet deep were 36,236 bars, glistening
in the half‐light.” A beautiful site to be sure.
Now you just need to move 80,000 pounds of awkward gold bars into your carts, up and
out of the vault, through the rest of the building, across your marked path through
the minefield - watch your step- and load them into your truck. If each cart can carry
roughly 1,000 pounds without breaking then that’s only 80 trips! So now you just need
to hope that you can get the gold out and no signals of the breach have reached the
authorities. And let’s not forget that most of these security measures we have talked
about are mere speculation, there could be many more that we’re unaware of. But let’s
just say you have beaten the system, and now it’s just some grunt work getting all the
gold to the truck. When fully loaded you and your guys drive off into the sunset, hmm,
let’s say sunrise. It’s better if the job is done at night. You are going to have
to melt this gold down and then find a fence to get rid of it for you. Luckily you met
a guy at the bowling alley the other month and he knows a guy who knows a guy who is
buying a huge amount of gold. You heard his name was Gold-pinky or thumb or something
like that.
Job well done, give yourself a pat on the back. Of course the entire time you and your
friends were doing this you have state of the art disguises on as well as full-body
outfits which would prevent you leaving behind any trace of you and your friends’ DNA.
As for the equipment used and the truck, well, let’s just say you met someone in the YouTube
comments section who knows how to make inconvenient things disappear. Congratulations, you’re
now an overnight billionaire! Now to retire and spend the rest of your life looking over
your shoulder wondering when the full weight of the US justice system and military will
come crashing down on you.
Okay, so we had to get pretty creative to figure out a way to break in to Fort Knox,
but most hackers don’t have the same issue. The reality is that most people are incredibly
vulnerable to having their personal information or accounts hacked and have no idea! No need
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But seriously, do you think after hearing this that it would be even remotely possible
for someone to break into Fort Knox and steal the gold? Tell us in the comments. Also, if
you do end up with a billion dollars, be sure to check out our other episode Spend $1 Billion
Dollars In 24 Hours or LOSE IT ALL - CHALLENGE. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.