Random World's Most Inaccessible Places (15 items)

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  (#14) Singapore FreePort

  One of the world's largest gold dealers stores its precious bullion at the Singapore FreePort, a high-security facility as big as six football fields with vault doors that weigh seven tons. Deutsche Bank stores $8.9 billion in gold at the "tax-free Fort Knox," alongside priceless works of art, jewels, and wine from around the world.
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  (#8) Smallpox Repositories

  It makes sense that two of the most inaccessible facilities in the world house something people do not want to be exposed to for even a second: smallpox. Need a refresher on smallpox? The infected develop pustules on their body that split the skin open horizontally so your body resembles "a cobbled stone street." Your skin essentially falls off and then you die, except in some rare cases where you live but are forced to live your life as a walking scar.

  Still, maintaining samples of the virus - which was otherwise eradicated in 1979 - is important in developing vaccines for it and studying how it works (after all, scientists are still unclear on how, exactly, it kills you). That's where the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA, and the State Research Institute of Virology and Biotechnology outside the city of Novosibirsk, Siberia, come into play. They are the only two places in the world known to house the smallpox virus.

  The CDC's smallpox is so secure that no one, on the record, has ever even hinted at where exactly it is located or how it is stored. In Siberia, the United States government has helped secure the samples in a massive facility with huge concrete walls, high-tech fences, and motion detectors. Supervillians looking to engage in viral warfare would have a hell of a time getting to the virus, and then they would have to risk dispersing it without becoming infected themselves.
  
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  (#15) The Bank of England's Gold Vault

  Under the Bank of England's HQ in London sits 4,600 tons of gold protected by bombproof walls and accessible only through the use of comically large three-foot long keys. The keys won't work, however, on their own: the person using them has to use a voice-recognition password before the vault will open.
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  (#10) Trementina Base

  Believe it or not, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's writings are (allegedly) inscribed on gold disks held in titanium caskets in an underground bunker known as the Trementina Base (because of the proximity to Trementina, NM). Accessible by private airstrip, the base is locked down tight and was built to withstand a nuclear blast.

  Outside the bunker are massive symbols in the desert floor similar to crop circles. When the symbols were spotted by the media in 2005 (they are massive, after all) the church tried unsuccessfully to suppress the story. It turns out that the symbols are meant for either (1) Scientologists returning to Earth after fleeing a future Armageddon and looking for Hubbard's works, or (2) for the spirit of a young, reincarnated L. Ron Hubbard to use to find his way home.

   
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  (#12) Antwerp Diamond Center

  They say there's no cleaner restaurant than one that just re-opened after a health code violation shut them down. That's also likely true of a diamond vault after a $100 million heist: you can bet that the extra security measures put in place have made it one of the most secure places on the planet. That's the case with the Antwerp Diamond Center in Belgium.

  After an expert diamond heist in 2003 - in which the perpetrators somehow got past infrared heat detectors, a seismic sensor, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations - the owners have likely learned their lesson. 
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  (#6) Federal Reserve Bank Gold Vault

   

  Here's what you're facing if you're the kind of cartoon super villain who wants to break into the New York City Federal Reserve Bank's gold vault: First, you have to deal with the building's security system and the armed Federal Reserve police force. Next up: steel-reinforced walls surround the vault, which is under 24-hour surveillance and protected by motion cameras.

  Is that it? Not even close: a 90-ton steel cylinder, encased in a 140-ton steel-and-concrete frame and locked with four steel bars, protects the only entrance to the vault. Good luck!
   

   

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