Top Ten Deadliest Places
WORLDS MOST SECURE PRISON
Where: ADX Florence, Colorado
Level of Security:
The DX Florence is the US’s highest security prison and claims to be the most secure prison in the world. It’s where the worst of the worst are kept. The cells’ furniture is made of the same poured concrete as the walls and floor. The prisoners are kept in solitary lock-down 23 hours a day, and pit in individual exercise pens the remaining hour. The corridors and exterior are secured with camera arrays, motion sensors, pressure pads in the ground, razor wire, attack dogs, and 1400 remote-controlled steel doors can lock off every section of the prison if needed. One former warden described it as “a cleaner version of Hell”.
How to break in:
Pretend to be a priest – prisoners are allowed visits from religious leaders, though only through a glass barrier.
WORLD’S DEADLIEST BOARDER
Where: North Korea
Level of Security:
The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that cuts Korean Peninsula in half is the world’s most heavily fortified border. Its 248 kilometers long, four kilometers wide, with razor wire fences on both sides and landmines scattered throughout the middle. The DMZ is also home to several dangerous species of endangered animals including tigers, leopards and bears.
How to break in:
The best way into North Korea is across the Tumen River from China. The Tumen in China’s Jilin Province can be swum across in places. North Korean patrols guards the river, but more than 10,000 North Koreans sneak across to Chine every year, so you can surely cross in the other direction.
NUCLEAR FALLOUT ZONE
Where: Chernobyl and Prypiat, Ukraine
Level of Security:
These two Ukrainian cities were evacuated after the reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (built by the Soviet Union in the mid’70s) suffered a catastrophic melt-down in April 1986, releasing massive amounts of lethal radiation into the air. About 14,000 people lived in Chernobyl and about 50,000 in Prypiat. For more than two decades, both have sat abandoned inside a massive secure area, 30km in every direction, known as the “Exclusion Zone”. The zones edges are patrolled by guards and police to prevent people from entering the contaminated area.
How to break in:
If your game, for a few hundred dollars, you can get a local guide to take you inside the Exclusion Zone, all the way to Prypiat (the fee includes use of a radioactive-detecting Geiger meter).
SECRET US SPY AGENCY
Where: National Security Agency Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
Level of Security:
The NSA is and ultra-secretive agency that intercepts foreign and domestic communications. It’s HQ, known simply as “The Building”, is based inside a high security US Army installation. It’s so clandestine; insiders joke the name stands for “No Such Agency”. The federal employees who work inside have to go through more than a dozen security checks (including pin coded doors, code locked doors and lifts and facial recognition scans) before they can even access their desks.
How to break in:
Recently, a US anarchist group got a hold of the NSA Security Manual, which details each level of the security protocols, and posted it online. So, if you want to peek around the secretive intelligence agency, just Google “NSA Security Manual.
NUKE-PROOF MORMON BUNKER
Where: Granite Mountain Records Vault, Utah
Level of Security:
In the 1950’s, members of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City tunneled hundreds of meters into Granite Mountain to create a massive underground vault to store millions of genealogical records on microfilm. Why? Who knows why the Mormons do anything. What’s for sure is 13-tonne blast doors that can withstand a nuclear blast protect the vault, with two smaller 9-tonne doors sealing off tunnels inside. There is also a full time staff of Mormons on hand to patrol the vault and protect their precious microfilm.
How to break in:
Become a Mormon elder. Or, simply go somewhere else to look at microfilms – a library for example.
UNDERGROUND DIAMOND VAULT
Where: Antwerp Diamond Bank, Belgium
Level of Security:
Antwerp, Belgium is the heart of the European diamond trade. The diamond vault, which holds over $150 million in gems, jewelry and cash at any given time, is located in a hardened underground concrete bunker, and is protected by a magnetically locked, drill-proof door that weighs three tones, light sensors, heat and motion sensors, magnetic sensors, seismic sensors, as well as armed guards.
How to break in:
In 2003, a team of thieves used a series of techniques to disable or trick every one of the vaults alarms, and made off with diamonds worth over $100 million. The team practiced for weeks on an exact replica vault they constructed after filming the real vault using hidden cameras. They used a metal frame to bend the magnetic field away from the door, re-wired the complex alarm system by feel in the dark, and fooled the heat sensors by spraying them with hairspray.
US SPECIAL OPS HEADQUARTERS
Where: MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida
Level of Security:
MacDill Air Force Base is the HQ of the US Central Command and US Special Forces Command unit of all Special Ops units of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. MacDill is also the home base of the 6th Air Wing, which deploys bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. So the place is packed with 4000 badass Special Forces killers protecting the highest-ranking operations commanders.
How to break in:
In 2006, two Tampa teens stole a car and crashed through the gate and made it all the way to the Central Command building.
