We bet that installing something as simple as an alarm or a fancy new lock makes you feel a little more secure in your own home, right? However, there are some places in the world that need a little more than a new mortice lock to keep their precious contents safe.
Take a look at seven of the weirdest, coolest (and kind of scariest) super secure places on the planet.
Doomsday Seed Vault
This is a really weird one, and one we’d never heard of until a few days ago. The Doomsday Seed Vault, also known as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, is a secure ‘seed bank’ buried deep into a mountainside on the Arctic island of Svalbard.
Resistant even to earthquakes and nuclear attack, the steel vault stores over 1 million unique seed samples to insure against the loss of crops in the event of a large-scale global crisis.
Fort Knox
The list has to mention Fort Knox, right? Based in Kentucky and home of the US’s 5,000 tonnes of gold reserves, Fort Knox is world famous for its no joke approach security. Surrounded by four foot thick, steel reinforced granite walls, two electric fences and an entire working military base, breaking in is no mean feat.
If you manage to traverse all of that there’s still the 22 ton, blast proof vault door to negotiate. And only a handful of people have access to certain parts of the access code, so you need all of them to actually open the thing!
The 1960s Bar
Located in the middle of the radiation proof Burlington bunker is the 1960s bar.
Created to protect high ranking British officials in the event of nuclear fallout during the Cold War years, the bunker included a replica of a pub frequented by senior politicians of the day. We suppose if Armageddon arrives then you may need a pint or two to wait it out…
ADX Florence Prison
Based in Colorado is the federal supermax prison, home to some of the world’s most dangerous criminals in the County of Fairmont. So you can understand why the institute is surrounded by 12 foot high razor wire fences, not to mention the whole host of steel doors controlled by remote-controls, motion sensor lasers and motion detector and cameras.
You’d be mad to even attempt to escape. It’s physically impossible!
Iron Mountain
The founder of Iron Mountain, Herman Khaust, purchased this depleted iron ore mine back in 1936 to enable his mushroom selling and marketing business to expand (yep, we said mushrooms). But here’s the cool part, in 1950 he transformed his business into an information protection centre, ensuring maximum protection as the Cold War loomed.
Boasting services such as data back-up and archiving, retention records and disaster recovery, this is what makes what was once a mushroom business a cool and seriously secure information protection centre!
The Safe House
Possibly the safest house to ever be constructed is located on the outskirts of Warsaw in Poland. What may look like a minimalist, architectural dream actually transforms from cool to concrete by the simple push of a button.
Shutting out all lights and sealing all windows and doors, this concrete box of a safe house really is where you want to be should the world break out into disarray.
Pionen Facility
Former civil defence centre, now home to the coolest underground high-security data centre, this cavernous centre is located 30m below ground level set in the White Mountains, in Sodermalm, a borough of Stockholm. It is believed to be able to withstand a hydrogen bomb (you know, just in case).
For added security and backup, they even have German Submarines on standby. This place is the coolest cave/office EVER and is probably best known as the place that used to house the WikiLeaks servers.
Whatever the size and scale of your business or property, security is always at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Take some inspiration from the above examples and make sure that you’re keeping your security a top priority by investing in state of the art home security systems.
