How Safecracking Works

about it. I think Lowe has said in once before. Yes, and did we record two episodes? I don't know, but Lowell even got a shout out at a live show, that's right, So we have released an episode with Lowell. So this isn't as far as everyone is concerned. Yeah, that's a I don't know if we ever told Lowell, but yes, he got a shout out. Did we ever tell you that lot? No, he's not answering. He knows

what he's doing. Look at my thumb here and you'll notice that the double band aid I uh cut pretty deep into the tip of my thumb, slicing a bagel with the brand new sharp serrated knife. And uh, it's amazing, how like how much not having the use of a thumb takes out of your life? Yes, man, it's I'm like, I can't believe just because it really hurts, so I'm not using it, but everything from like unbuttoning my pants,

two buttoning your pants, buttoning my pants. I'm like, man, I usually just pop it off with my left thumb um. But there's so many things that I'm not able to do or have a struggle to do. And trust me, I'm not complaining generally about this is an affliction in life, but just to point out, like the deal with like just one thumb, you really got to rethink some things. Yeah, it's crazy because you hear those things like you know, you you can't really walk if you're missing your peaky

toe or your big toe or something like that. It's like, try me. That sounds like a wager to me. But when you when you injure yourself like that, you really find out just how true that kind of thing is, you know. Yeah, and especially of course texting has been maddening. Yes, to try in one thumb text you need to just now is the time to start using Sirie to text. Well, I have I don't use Siri, but whatever, the the little microphone button when I voice to text or whatever.

Sure it works pretty good. Yeah, but you can do like you can just say series send a text. I haven't tried this myself, but you just say the text and then it sends a text text rather than a voice recording. Oh no, no, no it when I say voice to text, I mean I say it out loud and it makes it good to text. And you're using something other and Siri. Huh, Well I just hit the little microphone button. Huh. I gotta try that because I know the microphone button. Then you're speaking of well, there's two.

There's one that where you're talking about where you can record a message. Uh, and then there's one when you go to type in the very bottom. Oh no, did you hear that? Sorry? Oh this is so boring, everybody. I'm so sorry. Thumbs down. No, you can, but the it's incomplete, so chuck. Um. We're talking about safe cracking obviously today obviously, and there have been some really great safe cracking movies, movies that featured safe cracking. What's your favorite?

Die Hard is as far as safe cracking goes. That had its own subplot, but that's not my favorite safe cracking movie. Favorite safe cracking movie is bad, Sannah. Okay, so you know what's funny. When I was looking over this list, I got to die Hard and I was like, there's no safe cracking and die Hard is that right? Really it's its own thing, and no, it's I think because it's a vault. It temporarily tripped me up because I was thinking about small safes, but a vault is

a large safe. And then I felt like a dumb dumb. No, don't you can feel like a dumb dumb for cutting your own thumb off. Man, it was bad. But other than that, immediately ran and showed it to my daughter because she's been obsessed lately with I've been telling her stories of being injured as a child and I never broke bones, but you know, I cut myself and had stitches a bunch of times. Um, I would advise you

to knock coom Wood here. Yes, it's been a while, but she was She's constantly asking me, tell me about the times you got cut. And so finally I had a real world experience. I ran in there and went look, look, this is what it looks like. Look at all that blood. What did she do? Did she faint? No, she just kind of looked at it and was like, oh, oh, okay, cool. She's going to be the same person to look up wounds later on on. It is but the safe cracking movies I think. Uh. I mean, I'm a big fan

of Oceans, Love the Boy, Sexy Beast. It's hard to beat. It's a great movie. I don't recall the safe cracking in it, though, is is that? What? Um? Uh? What's his name? M what's his name? I want to call him Edgar Winners? Obviously that's not it great great guitars. What is his name? Are you talking about? Ben Kingsley? Are you talking about? You might remember if I say this and uh slight spoiler. But I thought it was one of the more imaginative highest scenes ever filmed because

it was underwater. Remember that. No, I don't. They flooded it as part of the I think it's it's been a while, but I think it's part of disabling security. So they did the whole thing underwater, which was really a twist I had not seen before. That's neat. I gotta go back and see that movie then, because I remember it being good. It was great. Okay, so that's your best safe cracking movie maybe, I mean I love

that movie a lot. Okay, so we've got We've got Sexy Beast and Bad Santa and with die Hard is an honorable mention, that's right. So in each of these movies they're actually probably fairly true to life if I remember correctly. And die Hard they had a devil of a time getting through that safe. They're using industrial drills to try to drill through the lock. And Bad Santa he tried everything and finally managed to smack it open with a sledgehammer at least the one scene that we

were shown with him robbing the safe. And then obviously I don't remember Sexy Beasts. But normally, in like a movie, when you watch somebody cracking a safe, they're like, you know, some pink Panther esque cat burglar who wears like black leather gloves and like twist the dial a few times with maybe like a stethoscope up to the safe, and

then the safe comes open. There are actually a few people in the world who might be capable of something like that in that time, but If you expand that time to say an hour, the number of people in the world who would be capable of doing something like that expands greatly. But there's still just crumbs among humanity as far as the number of people who could actually crack a safe like that is concerned. When it comes to safe cracking, most often it is the Billy Bob

Thornton brute strength method of hitting it with the sledgehammer. Um. But that's kind of the range that safe cracking takes up, you know, from you know, a master thief to a guy with a sledgehammer. Um. Safes are are broken into in a number of different ways, and Crumbs Amongst Humanity is also the best album by who Crumbs Amongst Humanity Edgar Winner. Okay, I also was reminded when you were talking about the ways to crack in that great scene and out of sight when they finally find the safe,

just raise their pistols up to shoot at it. Oh really, I still have yet to see that movie. I just saw The Lie Me. Oh that's right, great movie. It was great man. Yeah, you were absolutely right. It was a very good movie. Yeah. I had a feeling you'd like that one. You'd like out of sight you. Okay, I'm gonna watch that one next. I promise I'm not gonna throw any turkeys your way. Please don't. I know, I know you won't. I don't think you ever have throw a few year away. Nah, surely I have. I

take pride in the fact that I have. Well, I mean, one man's turkey is another man's great, like the troll Hunter and stuff like that. You've thrown my way. Troll Hunter is great. Yeah. See, some people might say it wasn't, but I didn't discue your your way. Who doesn't like troll Hunter? You've heard people who don't trolls. They're like,

it's graphic and disturbing. Well, this is what I proposed, Charles. Okay, we have been a bit like um, a little black and white cartoon donkey swatting at flies with his tail and starting this one. So I proposed that we take an ab break already, yes, collect ourselves, and come back to save cracking with guns blazing. Alright, very controversial. Let's do it all right? You ready? So I was taking

a poop this morning. Yes, I'm ready. And the first thing I want to say is, uh, in this house stuff works article, they talk about, and it makes a lot of sense. The one fundamental weakness of a safe is the fact that you know, if you lose the combination or something happens, you've got to be able to

get into it. Still, and therein lies the true weakness is that you have to be able to get into it without knowing the combination, right Like, it has to be accessible to anybody who who needs to get into it, which in some of those anybody's can be burglars. So the fact that you can't just encase it in concrete and hide it away from humanity, even crumbs of humanity, um means that it is a vulnerable place to put

your stuff. Yeah, but I was wondering, surely they could make a truly uncrackable safe with the the sales caveat of like, hey man, you're buying this thing. If you lose the combination, you are screwed. But it is truly uncrackable. I don't I don't know. I mean it sounds like from from this article like there's some way to get

through to any safe. It's just degrees of difficulty. Because the other the other kind of thing about this whole thing is like any safe is inherently vulnerable because people can get to it. But the longer you can make it um take to crack a safe, the longer the amount of time you can make it take, um, the

less chance you have of actually being robbed. Like there might be some guy sitting at your in your house trying to crack your safe, but if you have a really good safe, he's either going to give up or spend enough time there that he gets caught. Um And either way, your stuff should be protected. That seems to be what they're after when they make safe. Yeah, and you know what I did yesterday while I was researching this,

did you buy a safe? Safe? It's something that had been meaning to do for like two years and finally I just did it. And the kind of safe that we're talking about here that a lot of people keep in their homes. Uh. If it's not like you know, some people have gun safes and things like that, but is is a fire safe. And that's basically like, let me put imported documents or irreplaceable things in here. They're generally pretty small, uh, and they keep your stuff safe

from like flood and fire is a general idea. Then there are burglary safes, which don't keep your stuff safe from fire. In fact, if there's a fire, will probably cook it. Uh, but that is a little harder to get into what I want. I mean, I got the ultimately, I got the fire safe, but what they don't make and I think, I don't know if it's a guy thing, but what I really wanted was one of those safe with like the little spinny wheel on the front of it.

It looked like a super movie type safe. I think those are several price points beyond whatever safe you've got. I think those are really expensive safe. They are, and that's not what I need. So I was just like, no, just get the one that's like whatever. I think it's a couple of hundred bucks. So, yeah, you've got fire safe and you have burglaries safe, and they do two different things. And I was like, surely somebody's come up with a fire fire resistant burglar resistance safe and know

that apparently isn't the case. There apparently still two different things. But there's also a certain degree to a fire resistance safe. Um that makes it kind of a subsection of a fire resistance safe called a media safe, where your digital documents are going to be protected in the amount of fire or in the event of a fire. Yeah, and

I mentioned gun safes. Those are the closest, uh to what I'm describing as in cool looking like they're kind of the tall things that look like you would find in an old timey bank with the big wheel that spins, and that's where you can put in like rifles and stuff like that, not like the little handgun safe you might keep under your bed or whatever. Right, And then depending on the kind of safe you want, it will

be rated one way or another. If it's a fire safe, it will be rated for how many hours it can withstand a certain amount of temperature, usually about the temperature of a house fire. Um. And they also usually rate them so that they'll survive about a twenty to thirty ft drop, as if the floorboards that are holding the safe up on the third story of the house have burned through and the safe falls all the way to

the foundation. Yeah, that's another one too. A burglar safe isn't going to protect your stuff in the fire, like you said, it's gonna cook it. But they're also rated

for how difficult it is to penetrate. And um, there are a lot of things that manufacturers add to a burglar safe, which is you know, iron clad, UH steel frame, steel bolted, usually multi um multi bolted, like when you turn that that that lever the handle to open the safe, to unlock it, there's usually two three, four, depending on how big the safe is, bolts that are holding it in place that you're you're releasing UM and there's a lot of other like kind of bells and whistles that

they add to UM two safe to protect them from burglary. Yeah, you know what I was thinking too when I was and we'll get to it later on. But one of the methods is to you know, get us blow a hole in it where you can get a screwdriver in there and take off parts from the interior. I love that method. I was like, rivets, well, I got screws

in there, right, It seems like a no brainer. It really does seem kind of surely there's people have figured this stuff out by now, you know, I know, maybe we should, you know, when this whole thing drives up, get into the safe design industry, I think we might or safe cracking. Sure. Okay, So with UM we'll talk about some of the methods that manufacturers used to foil burglars.

But there's one thing that's common to fire safe burglar safes just about any safe these days, and that's been a kind of a commonality for about the last time three years, and that's the fact that basically all of them have combination locks. Those wheels that you used to spin, like on your high school locker to open it. That's

a combination lock, and it's the same thing. Although you probably have a much tougher, much more sophisticated one on a burglar um safe than you did on your high school locker, it's it's basically the same component, and which when you kind of get just even a rough grasp of how the combination lock works, you can get a better idea of of how people break into those things too. Yeah, and then there's a couple of different types UM categorized

thrilling lee as a group one and group two. Group two is the kind you're most likely to find in someone's closet. Uh. That's usually a three number combination, but it can be one, two or three. I don't I don't see how a one number combination really helps you much. No, because you can just try like things you need to get in there exactly. That's true. But um, the group one locks, you can have up to six numbers in the combination and they are suffered to get into their

sturdier uh, and they have more wheels. And you're gonna hear us talk about wheels in the wheel pack. Each number on the combination is represented by a separate wheel. So if you have a six number lock, that means you have six wheels in that wheel back right exactly, And so each of those wheels has a notch in it. And when you are doing the combination, you know left thirteen, right, fifty seven, you know left nine, combination right some mine,

believe me. Um, when you when you get that combination right, what you've done is line up each of those wheels that are stacked behind one another so that their notches all line up, which allows this thing called the fence to fall into that notch. And when the fence has fallen into that notch, it's no longer preventing the lever from moving. And when you can move the lever, you can open the bolt, which opens the safe. It's it's

it sounds very easy, and it's way easier. If you see like a diagram or cutaway or a cross section of it. But it's really it's really that. And I mean they came up with combination locks about a hundred years ago and there have not been too many improvements on the general design of it. It was virtually a perfect locking design, is like, right when they came up

with it. Yeah, and it is kind of cool to look at a breakdown of the inside of one of these, because if you're like me and you're fascinated by some sort of simplistic mechanical designs, the combination lock is a great example of that. It really is. It really is. So just the number of wheels you have is the number of numbers in that combo um and then you know that's really it. That's your your combination lock. So one of the first things if you're trying to get

into you ready to talk about breaking into these safes? Now, yeah, I mean with the caveat that this is uh, I mean I was about to say it's illegal. Technically, it's probably not illegal to crack a safe, but it is illegal to steal something. No getting illegal to steal something right, absolutely wrong. It's a free for all. It's like the

purge for your stuff. Um, they they I have seen that there are laws where if you are caught entering a house with safe cracking tools, you you're automatically accused of of It's the same charge as if you have successfully broken into and stolen contents from the safe. Safe cracking it's a separate crime. There's you know, breaking and entering, larceny, burglary, and there's also safe cracking. So in addition to burglary and larceny and breaking and entering, you'll get an additional

safe cracking um charge against you. And they used to be stiff. Apparently there was a guy who got something like fifty seven or seventy years for safe cracking and appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that it was cruel and unusual for a safe cracking beef, which is I think the wording they use. But but um, it's still like its own separate thing. People will get years in prison just for the safe cracking element of their

their charges. Yeah, I guess I think what I was saying was it's not inherently illegal, Like if you and I bought a safe and we wanted to try and crack it for fun, right, right, that's it's illegal to crack into someone else is safe without their uh tacit approval, right, So then that actually brings up this whole other thing, Chuck, there's a there's some of the people, a lot of the people who break into safes are professionals. They're safe technicians,

their locksmiths. There are people who come to your aid when you have forgotten the combination. Um. They're very frequently called them when somebody um inherits an old safe that they don't have a combo for anymore. Um. If a bank employee accidentally locks the vault uh and there's you know, they can't open it because there's it's a time law, but they need to get in there because it's still

business hours. There's like safe technicians who will travel like around the country or the world, who lead very very interesting lives because they cracked saves. And one of the things that they try to do is to make it so that it's almost like they weren't even there. So the level of impact that they have on that safe, they try to keep to such a minimum that it just needs maybe minor repairs um to to bring it back to operating level again. Yeah, can we go ahead.

I mean, that's a nice little set up. I know I'm jumping ahead. But can we talk about Harry C. Miller for a minute. Yeah, let's so we'll get to what how he actually does this. But Harry Miller, he's he passed on and he was an expert safe cracker and basically the guy that came up with the with with you know the kind of thing that you see in the movies when you crack a safe without using dynamite or plasma cutters or you know, explosives or whatever.

And he became the foremost genius an authority kind of worldwide for safe cracking, such that he taught the FBI, he taught law enforcement officials. Uh. He was hired privately during World War Two. He opened up a gold bully on chest for Shanghai check. He there was a dictator, uh full gen Cio Batista. He hired him to open safe that have been captured from Fidel Castro. During the Roosevelt administration, he was called to the White House to open a safe after the assassination of the guy who

the only person who knew the combination. So he had a really like you were saying, a really exciting life. And he was the guy. Uh he was known as Miller the safe Man. And after a while he was able to crack any safe within twenty minutes by manipulation, which, like we said, is is using your hands and your ears and your eyeballs. Yeah, and he created eventually a manipulation proof lock, which was the first innovation in like seventy a hundred years in lock technology. Yeah. And then

he ended up and apparently in Kentucky. And I think you and I should totally go to this place at some point. There's a museum that houses uh more than twelve thousand locks that he's collected dating back to hreds. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, the UM like safe technicians and locks guys, they just collect safe in old locks and stuff like that. Yeah. This, this guy's collection is neat. So his his legacy, Chuck was, I mean, it's still alive.

And well there was a guy named Jeff Star who died I think last February, UM and he was the eight time winner of the Lockmaster's International Safe Cracking Competition, which is basically the world Championship of of safe cracking. Like he worked for the government too. There was like some ship in the Persian Gulf who's safe was um

locked and nobody could get in. They flew him out there. Uh. He was just like this master safe cracker and came across another guy, um that um Jeff Manna interviewed in The Atlantic named Jeff. I'm sure he goes by Jeff, but I always pronounced it Jeff anyway. Um, he his name is Charlie Santory. He's pretty pretty cool. He's got like kind of this um criminals swagger to him, Like he wears Fedoras and stuff like that while he's cracking in the safe. But he's like, you know, he's a

he's a safe cracker. He's on the up and up from what I understand out in l A. But there's a lot of like really interesting interviews with safe crackers out there that they'll they'll all share information, but you can tell, and I've figured this out in the research too, there's a lot of stuff they're not they're not sharing. It's really tough to go figure out how to crack a safe just um, you know, without becoming part of

like the inner circle of safe crackers. From what I can tell been with the information that's out there, and there's a lot of information out there, it's just there's not a lot of it that's complete from what I can tell. Well, before we jump into lock manipulation, which is uh, the one that Harry Miller had perfected. Uh, we'll go sort of with the dumb dumb methods. When you get your safe, it's gonna have it's it's called a tryout combination, or basically the default combination that it

comes with. And a lot of people don't reset this, even though they tell you really need to reset your combination, some people just don't do it. And uh, they are known combinations. So the first thing a safe cracker will try is that default combination, because you never know, you might have a fifty shot of that thing opening up

without anything other than just twisting the old dial right exactly. UM. And you know, since so many of them are like industry standards, they'll just use you know, they'll try a few of them, maybe spend a couple of minutes just giving it a shot, and if it happens, awesome, there's all so something called daylocking, which is if you have a safe and you dial in the combination of the safe, um, you can turn the lever and open the safe. You can also close the safe and close the lever without

changing the combo again, so it's technically unlocked. You just have to open the lever to open the safe, and apparently a lot of people just kind of leave their safes that way. And if you're a burglar, step one, even before you try some of those industry standards combinations try out combinations, is yeah, try the lever. Just try that first, Yeah, because I guess you don't want to spin the thing at all, because that would reset it

right exactly. Uh. The other thing you can do is just look at the safe and see if there's a sticky note on it with the safe combination, because there are plenty of dumb dumbs who do that as well. I love that one too, or screwed scribbled on the wall nearby or something like that. Yeah, there's even if you went to the trouble of hiding it, it's probably in the same room as the safe, and it's probably on some little scrap of paper that you tried to

make look as innocent as possible. But to to cab burglar a safe cracker, they're they're going to be able to say this is the combination to the safe. Thank you chump. Yeah, like it says, um, you know, they just scrambled the word safe and it says off say combination. Right, they use pig land. That'll that'll trick them. So we're at the point where we're at lock manipulation. And uh yeah, this is the process of opening a safe without drilling it,

without defacing it. This requires you too. This is what you see in the movies. But it doesn't go down like you see in the movies because it takes a lot longer than it does in the movies. Even Harry Miller, the most genius safe cracker of all time, apparently, uh it took him like twenty minutes. So in a movie, you don't have that kind of time. You got they do that thing in like thirty seconds, right they do.

And and so when you see like, um, someone in a movie um using like a stethoscope, that's actually kind of accurate. That's not far off at least um so that that's not entirely made up or anything like that. But it takes way longer, Like you're saying. The reason why it takes way longer because you're actually graphing the these different attempts. You're making over say all hundred numbers

of the dial. You're doing them two to three numbers at a time, and you're going through this procedure um back and forth to kind of find where possibly the um those slots and the wheels line up for each each number. And because this takes so many attempts, say so say just real quick, say there's like four wheels

in a lock um. That means that for every single one of those wheels, while you're trying to figure out the number over a hundred numbers, you're doing them in increments of two, right, And for each one of those increments of two, you're graphing down where you think the lever is, and this takes a tremendous amount of time.

After you graph it, you have to go back and look to see where these dips are, where it seems like the levers are, and then you start to narrow down where the number might be for each of those wheels. And then when you finally have it narrowed down, you have it at four different numbers that you're pretty sure the numbers of the combination. You still don't know what order they go in, so you have to try every single combination of those four numbers left and right until

you finally hit the one that opens the safe. That is the the standard, that's the one that Harry Miller came up with. That's the highest level of safe cracking. UM and even that takes a tremendous amount of time. To be able to do that in twenty minutes is

mind boggling. Yeah, I mean, I think you hit it on the head and that what you're doing is is narrowing it down because while you are listening for clicks, just like in the movies, it's not like you turn something and you hear a click and you're like, well that's the number. Let me go back left click, Well there's the other one. Because like anybody could do that

that that's super easy. And I can't believe that, like the movie going public has been buying it for this long the solid to you know, Yeah, it's kind of like that thing where um or like they don't have to reload the gun um because you know, no one wants to see him reload the gun. And I actually saw that there was a a um A focus group done in like the eighties or something at the heyday of like Schwarzenegrance Stallone and the movie studios wanted to

know if people wanted to see that. They were like, do you want realistic where they stop and reload, or do you want them to just shoot a million bullets in a scene? And overwhelmingly people were responded with a million bullets in a scene. Police, that's what we want to see. I generally don't care, but when whenever there's a wee gun revolver, I still find myself counting and I try not to and it doesn't like, it doesn't

tick me off, and like that's not possible. But I'm always kinda like six eight Okay, all right, here we go. I thought you I thought you were talking about that wheelgun they had in Predator that Jesse Ventura had, Remember that one? Was it a Gatlin gun? Yeah? That was amazing. No, I just mean a standard revolver. They're called wheel gun. I know what you're saying, Like this, this Stallone movie is just completely unbelievable. Exactly. That was the only thing.

But so it's the same thing. My point was, I'm sorry, we got kind of far away from My point was that is a kind of boiled down, simplified version of what they're doing, but rather than just hearing the click safe, you just have to find four clicks for each for this four number combination, and then you're in the safe. You have to go over this hundreds of times to go over a graph and then go back and narrow it down X number of times depending on how many

numbers there are in the combination. You have to try every combination of those numbers. So it's like a boiled down version of that. It's not entirely made up, but it's pretty far off from reality. Yeah, I mean it's the movie version. I think. What would be fun to see, and I'm surprised no one's done this yet, is for someone to kind of, uh, what's a nice way to say,

take the piss um, take the piss. I believe, to take the piss out of a scene like that and have a non safe cracker be like here's you know, here's your stethoscope. It'll take like a minute, right, and for the person to say like, no, you gotta graph this stuff out and you gotta narrow it down, like you've seen too many movies that kind of right, exactly pretty creepy. I don't know, I'm waiting for it to We need uh one of the Zucker brothers to make it for us. Oh man, I miss those fans. So um.

So that's lock manipulation. That is the the pinnacle of safe cracking, because whether you're a safe tech mission or a cat burglar um, you have basically left no trace. It's like you just came in and figured out through sight and sound, um, in precise detail, what the combination of that safe was, and then you opened the safe. You didn't beat it up, you didn't do anything. Um, you are even the cops consider you a master criminal

in one of basically a dying or dead breed. Um. That is a very very small number of people, not just alive today but in the history of crime who've done that. Most people have looked at a safe and been like, let me just blow that open. Yeah. And I also thought lock manipulation before I read what that meant.

I thought that might have been like emotional manipulation, Like you go to the lock and you're like, you probably can't even unlock yourself, can you that kind of yeah, Oh you're clad in that, yeah, and then the yeah with the sad face. So safe manipulation is well hold on, Should we take another break? Should we? I'm calling for the bra today, baby, All right, let's do it, all right?

Safe manipulation, We're back, everybody. Oh yeah. Safe manipulation is sort of the the guerilla method to the technicians method that we mentioned before. And there are many ways to manipulate a safe, uh, And we'll get to some of the louder bang bang types in a minute. But drilling is the kind you see a lot in movies, and it's a really common way to get into a safe in a movie. You're generally working against a clock or something.

But I don't think we pointed out a lot of times you will just try and steal the safe and bring it back to your you know, your villain's warehouse to do all the work there your layer, Yeah, where you've got all the time in the world to drill into that thing. Um. But that's generally what you're doing. You're drilling, uh. And you've got a serious drill because

they do make them very tough to get into. So you've either got like a diamond bit or something to try and drill through what's usually a cobalt plate that is designed to keep you from drilling into it or at least slow it down. Yeah. Right, So, like if you use a regular you know, metal drill bit for for drilling into metal, that that cobalt plate will just eat those things up, like you'll just never get through them.

But if you have diamond tip or tungsten carbide is another preferable tip um when you're drilling through it, if you're if you have enough time and enough um drills, because apparently the drill bits will outlast the drills when you're using them like this um, you will eventually punch

through that that cobalt plate. UM and drilling is a is a pretty I think drilling is actually the most widespread method of breaking into safes, whether you're a safe technician or a burglar um because it's it's it's precise, but at the same time, it doesn't require anywhere near the skills of um lock manipulation. Yeah, and when you're drilling, there's a few different ways or places you can drill

the you know what. A common one and a pretty obvious one is to go right through that combination lock itself, right through the face of the lock. Uh, that's a pretty easy way to do it. But that's where that cobalt plate is. So you can also avoid that thing. And you can drill in above it and an angle and dodge the plate. I guess you know you've done your research. If you're a safe cracker, you know how

big that plate is. Probably yeah, So you go in at an angle from the top, let's say, or I guess the bottom, and then you put in a fibroc to UH fiber optic camera called a boroscope. And you can just get these at a hardware store, any kind of specialty equipment. Sometimes they'll use like medical devices like that they stick in your bottom, they'll use those two. Okay, I've just seen it out there. There's a guy who's actually a master safe Cracker UM who has what are

called penetration parties unfortunately named penetration parties. His name is Dave mccomi, and I believe he is the founder or at least the guy who's running the show at the National Safe Cracker International Safe Cracker support for him UM and he and UH at least one of these these UM he creates like a newsletter for the industry, like for real and in the bottom he's got he sells two scope kids with light source and cases for fifty dollars and their medical grade arthroscopes. So I mean, yes,

at least some pros use the medical stuff. I'm sure they haven't been in anyone's but although if they have been, I'll bet you can get them for a deep discount. So he has held penetration parties and it has a drill bit newsletter called just the Tip, Chuck, you have been on fire my man in que four. All right.

So what you're doing though when you insert that camera is once you have drilled in from above it at an angle, you put in the camera and then you can just see the whole mechanism from inside there and just line everything. Yeah yeah, yeah, rather than using a stethoscope in your you know, site and sound. You're just watching to see where the levers are and twisting the thing until they line up and there's your safe open.

Which is that was news to me. I thought when you drilled into a safe your point was to like destroy the locking mechanism. I didn't realize to see, you can also drill into the safe. Um. Sometimes they'll use multiple holes depending on how easy it is to get through, one for the arthroscope and one one for I didn't realize this is gonna turn so sexual, one for the bores cope, and then one for like a punching rod.

Good lord, um, and the punching rod. Will you can manipulate the inside of the lock with the punching rod to like move the stuff around while you're watching, Lord, maybe a partner's watching, who knows. Uh. There's also oh man, what is happening? I don't know, but the walls are melting all of a sudden. So there's also another backup system.

Because here's the deal. Every time you find a work around to get into a safe, there's some manufacturer that's trying to destroy that work around, and there's something called a relocker, and that is tripped when your drill bit breaks through some sort of indicator, like a piece of plastic or glass that you drill through, and once that thing is breached, it's gonna trigger an auxiliary locking device.

And apparently this like completely locks you out to the point where you have to go to a unlocksmith or a safe technician. Yeah. And the reason why is because it's this locking device is unrelated to the combination lock. Uh, It's it's just like basically a booby trap. And then once it's tripped there, you can't unlock it. You have to go in and drill and then manipulate the thing to open it back up. So um, it's it's kind of like a a self destruct mechanism for the safe.

And because it's not related to the combination lock, it's a separate, independent lock. You can twist the combination all day long and know the combination it's not going to do anything. It's locked separately. Um and apparently not just cat burglars and and um uh, you know homeowners accidentally tripped this thing. It's pretty frequently tripped by safe technicians

to um who live in dread. I read on one safe technicians forum that at the very least, when you break the glass and trip the relocker, you can relax because you know the worst case scenario has now happened, and then you have to dig your way out of it. Another drilling method is if you go in on the back side, you can drill a couple of holes. And this is the one we mentioned earlier where I thought

rivets might come in handy. You put in the boroscope and then you have a really long screwdriver and you just unscrew that cobalt plate. But again I don't know why they would ever use a simple screw, So then you've got cobalt plates relockers. I also saw chuck that there was a trend early in the last century where they would add either manufacturers would put them on, or you could buy them and put them on like aftermarket parts.

Um a a little like steel plate thing that you riveted onto the safe, and then inside the steel plate were extremely fragile glass vials that contained phosgene gas or incredibly potent tear gas, so that if you attacked a safe using you know, a drill or a hammer or try to drop it or something like that, you'd break these vials of gas and would basically poise in yourself, and you would be run away from the safe as

fast as possible. Apparently it is a great idea, or so it was for you know, old timy days before they had laws um. But as people kind of got wise to the dangerousness of this whole thing, they started removing them. But every once in a while you'll still find an old safe. And there is a legend, an urban legend among lock um locksmiths and safe technicians that over the decades this gas turns into nitroglycerin, and so

it'll actually blow up if you break these vials. So more than one bomb squad has been called out when like a locksmith came upon one of these things and believed the urban legend that he'd heard all these years this this is probably nitroglysten, when really, I mean, it was just phosgene gas, which is not good. But it certainly wasn't explosive like nitroglyscer and it certainly hadn't spontaneously

turned into it. Very interesting, I thought so too. You know, I wondered if just thought about the rivet thing again. I wonder if that cobalt is so. I wonder if it's not rivetable. You know, you seem like a frog right now, you know what I mean. Though, maybe you can't rive it through that thing. I mean, if you can drill through it with diamond tip um, you could rivet it, especially if you're the manufacturer, you totally could.

They're just being lazy. Let's talk about some of the other things you see in a movie sometimes, which are the use of torches um. Sometimes you will see something like an oxy acetylene torch, and they those daddies can go up to degrees useless useless you think, you think, yeah, from what I saw, like a good burglar safe would resist that. So those were the old days, yes, I

or they were just never used. It might be like movie kind of thing because what I saw it takes something like a thermal lance which gets up to eight thousand degrees fahrenheight. Those are pretty cool, or they are very cool. Or get this, a plasma cutter, which uses a current of electricity to convert um highly compressed gas into plasma, which plasma is the fourth state of energy um and it gets apparently up to fifty thousand degrees fahrenheight. And we'll just cut right through a safe if you

know what you're doing. But they're really hard to use, they're really dangerous and they require um extensive training. Like if you're if you're a plasma cutter guy, you're probably getting more than just the standard share of the loot um for a safe job. Well, I feel like a fool. Now we'll be here with my oxy acetylene torch. You've been going at it for a while. You're just like just gonna make a crimbrole a honey, right, make a

smoky gin Anton, Oh yeah, exactly. So these plasma cutters and uh thermic glances, you can just I mean, sometimes you're trying to cut the lockout and sometimes you're just cutting a hole in there so you can reach in and get whatever you're trying to get, right, which I mean that makes sense. But one of the things you have to be careful with is not excellently burning all of like the cash inside or something like that. It's it's delicate work. It seemed like you want to maybe

cut the hinges off or something like that. Is is a good way to do it. Yeah, if you know what you're going for, Like if you know they were just diamonds, if there's ice in that thing, m hm, he might be safe, go for it. But also, I mean, if you're if you know enough that the you know the placement of the stuff in there, maybe you could cut the top off of the safe and know that there's nothing high up in it, or or cut the back off because there's nothing in the back, it's all

stuffed towards the front. Who knows it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility because is one of the one of the hallmarks of being a safe cracker is research, not just researching the safe you're working on to know what you're dealing with, what safeguards and securities you're having

to get around, but also your mark the person you're robbing. UM, you want to have done some sort of research on them so you can, um at the very least make educated guesses about what kind of behavior they're going to engage in and putting stuff in their safe, where they would put it, how they would put it in there, what they would put in there, that kind of stuff, maybe what the combination is if they've actually changed the combination to something personal. Sure, is it diamonds? Is it

bare bonds? Is it Cougarran's is it other things in movies that have heard? Is it smoleans? Uh? You mentioned nitroglystener in earlier, and this is another thing that you can do. Uh. It's called a jam shot or nitroglysteners, also called Greece if you're in the industry. Yeah, and I didn't fully understand how this worked other than the

fact that what you're essentially doing is blasting this thing. Yeah, you're just making like a little funnel out of soap that you're adhering to, like where the door and the safe come together, putting some nitroglycerin in it, putting a blasting cap in there, and touching the wires together while

you're very far away. You set off the blasting cap, which sets off the nitroglyctener, which blows the door off of the safe, which again you want to make sure that there's just diamonds in there, something that can withstand this blast, because that's you don't want to blow up the loot. That's not a good good move for a burglar or a safe technicsue is being called out to open a safe. If you blow the door off of your clients safe, uh and blow up everything inside, do

you you're probably not gonna get paid that day. Yeah. I'm trying to picture a thief um taking the time to break into what will be in my safe and be in and finding my ziploc bag of concert ticket stubs, right, which is disappointed? I would I would suggest chucked us to leave it a daylocked. Yeah, yeah, because I mean at the very least you'll you'll have your safe. Still they'll be like this is this is useless? Worthless stuff, and you'll say not to me, cat burglar, now please

leave my house. Yeah, I'm not even sure what we're gonna do. I have a feeling it's going to be in one of those things where everyone's like, you need a fire safe and we're gonna get it in our house and open it up, and then Emily and are going to look at each other and say, well, what do we put in there? Well, you put things like I don't know, like um, a tax documents maybe, or just the most eye bleedingly boring stuff you can think of. That's why a fire safe is for. It's just for

basically like document storage. I know, but I can't think of any document that's not electronic these days. Well, you can put those things on a thumb drive and then put the thumb drive in the that's yeah, and I guess maybe, especially since I mean it's kind of mundane. Um. But if you treasure memories and you have a ton of of digital files, putting them on multiple thumb drives

in a safe isn't a bad idea? Yeah. Or if you have an extensive collection of precious memories figurines, if you want to keep those safe, put them in your fires safe are your little holly hobbies exactly. Uh, most locks and and this safe that I got is an electronic safe, so it has an electronic lock, which allows for far greater number of groupings and combinations you can do things. Some of them you can connect to an app to open it. Some of them have like these

electronic front door locks. You can have different combinations for different people, you can lock people out, so a lot more variety and an electronic lock safe, right, So this is like represented this kind of new leap forward among safe cracking because they're like, Okay, we'll learn to deal

with this. There's um this. I love this. If you're a really good cat burglar, you may break into the house the night or a couple of days before you plan to break in and rob the safe and put ultra violet ink on stuff, but you know the person will touch and then you go back when you go to rob the house and use a black light and shine it on the computer keypad of the electronic lock, and you can see what numbers have been pushed, and in doing so, you can just try the combination of

say like those four, six, eight numbers and pop the safe right open. I love that one that's like, that's just like nineteen eighties computer hacker movie stuff. Yeah, I feel like I've seen that in like a Mission Impossible or something. Surely we have where you sign a shine a black light and you see like the thumb print or the fingerprint or whatever on the combination. That's there's

just there's no way we haven't. But the idea that someone does that in real life is just I mean, I tend not to respect criminals, but hats off to that one. That's that's some real sticktuitiveness. So, uh, is there anything else here? Um? Oh, yeah, there's there's Yeah, there was this one at the very end they say

don't try this at home. By the way, this article is written on how stuff works, like you said, but it was written by a guy named Robert Valdez who who made maybe the most valuant effort I've seen at explaining in words how to manipulate locks, and then a really good job. It's just really hard to understand just reading it. But I would also shout out another site that went even deeper, like David Reest does um and they like really explain how to manipulate safe is called

opening Safes. By manipulation by Gail Johnson on lock smith Ledger dot com. And I mean it's it's as detailed as I've seen for sure, So shouts out to them. But at the end of this um this how stuff works article, it says this is all very much too legal. Don't don't do this, especially for crime. That's correct, especially for crime, especially for crime. Everybody. Um, well, that's it for safe cracking. I'm glad we did this one. Chuck, how about you? Yeah, me too, fun movie stuff, lots

of body humor. Yeah, they did get body. Uh. And since we said did get body everybody, that means it's time for a listener. Man. Uh. Let me see here. This is some advice for Julia. Hey, guys, been a listener since summer of two thousand eighteen, the Summer of love. That's right, very nice. About one year after I graduated in college, go banana slugs. So, I think that's you, see Santa Cruz, right, I think? So? I began to

flail around aimlessly, searching for meaning and purpose. One thing I didn't have to flail for was love of learning, especially once I discovered your show. I really appreciate the work you do and giving us listeners hundred thousands question mark of episodes to listen to remember a thousand? Oh yeah, I don't know if you can call that thousands though, didn't need to be at least two thousand. I don't know, yeah, probably,

so we'll just say scores and scores. I wanted to ask a question, since you all seem like open minded, knowledgeable people, what were some of the things you did after college? High school? Uh, let's go ahead and answer each one of these. Wanted to time. Well, I'll take this one. Um. You know, I've I've talked about it before, but I worked in the film industry for a while and then worked in marketing for a little while, and then eventually was a writer like you for How Stuff

Works yep dot com. So that the some of the things I did the dream job getting hired like that, you know, like we both want to the writers and it was like, hey, you're professional writers, now tried. How didn't you hold on real quick? Chuck? Didn't you turn in a movie script as as your writing sample? All I had? That's boss and you got the job? Yeah? Luckily our boss, Uh it was as a screenwriter himself. So he was like I'll take this. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, he turned it into his own and he stole it.

How did you come to find yourselves where you are now? Well, I think we discovered that we got a job writing for the website and our boss said, hey, why don't you try this podcasting thing? Yeah, and boy was at a great day. In retrospect, it really was because, you know, we didn't know what we were doing, but because no one knew what we were doing and we were able to like kind of fly under the radar and just

try it out, try new things. There weren't a lot of expectations or anything like that, and next thing, you know, people started listening to it. So yeah, it was. It was cool, you know, just kind of being able to do it on our own terms all these all these years. Agreed.

Next question, did you ever feel like you would not find your your place and your niche speaking for myself, I very much felt that way absolutely, Although I mean the writing gig was cool, but it definitely wasn't like, all right, well, this is it for me forever, right, And I think anybody who has ever been alive has gone through that point, you know, whether you um drop out at school or whether you graduate with the pH d.

It really doesn't matter. There's like some point in your life where you have a crisis of confidence either what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Or have I been going down the wrong path this whole time and now I need to figure something else out. Everybody has that that crisis, you know, usually multiple times throughout their life. So yeah, of course we felt that way. Everybody feels that way, and if you do feel that way, don't don't get discouraged like it. You come out of

that that little woods that you have to go through. Well, that sound kind of satisfies the last question from Julia as any advice for my quarter life crisis, I don't think that advice is great. And also, you know, if you are at your quarter life crisis, you've got a long way to go. So my advice is just don't stress too my uch, now try some different things. You've got time, and uh, you don't really feel that life clock ticking, at least I didn't until I was in

my forties. It's true, but I remember being worried in the twenties and the thirties and everything. To you kind of have those times, you know, Yeah, but don't let it consume you try some stuff out. You don't have to be making forever decisions right now. Uh. And you might, you know, you might find yourself backing into an experience because you have tried out different things. Yeah. And even if you do have to make a forever decision, just

know that very few decisions are irrevocable. And even if it is irrevocable, if you remember the mantra to be kind, be kind, be kind, those are the three most important things in life, says Bertrand Russell, then you're probably not going to make a forever decision that's irrevocable and horrible at the same time. You know what, that's great advice. Look, thanks man. Thanks. So she concludes with saying thanks for your work on stuff you should know, movie Crush and

The Into the World, my favorite three podcast. I can't wait to see you at SF. Sketch Best that's from Julia. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Julia. Good luck with your quarter life

crisis will pass. Don't worry about that. Uh. And if you're like Julia and you want to get in touch with us for advice or just to say hi or whatever, you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our social links there and you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.