How Safecracking Works

Burglars have come up with a whole range of ways to get into a safe. There’s lock manipulation – methodically testing the dial to coax the combination from it – and if that fails you can always blow it open with nitroglycerin. Both count as safecracking.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
and there's guest producer and Loll Loll today and this

(00:21):
is Stuff you should Know. I over enunciated Lowell's name
because I didn't want you to perk up and be
like Noel. I wanted the people who who get perked
up by Lowell to perk up. That's right, which is
to say the whole world. And you know, I think
about it. I think Lowe has said in once before. Yes,

(00:43):
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

(01:03):
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

(01:24):
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.

(01:46):
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

(02:08):
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

(02:29):
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

(02:51):
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

(03:14):
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

(03:35):
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,

(03:59):
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,

(04:19):
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,

(04:41):
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

(05:03):
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.

(05:25):
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

(05:47):
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

(06:08):
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

(06:29):
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,

(06:50):
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

(07:13):
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.

(07:36):
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

(07:57):
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

(08:20):
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

(08:40):
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,

(09:02):
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

(09:26):
do it all right? You ready? So I was taking

(09:51):
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

(10:14):
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

(10:36):
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

(10:57):
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

(11:20):
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

(11:41):
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

(12:03):
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

(12:26):
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.

(12:49):
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.

(13:10):
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

(13:33):
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,

(13:54):
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

(14:15):
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,

(14:39):
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

(15:02):
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

(15:22):
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

(15:46):
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,

(16:07):
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

(16:27):
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

(16:49):
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

(17:09):
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,

(17:31):
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

(17:53):
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

(18:14):
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

(18:37):
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,

(18:58):
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

(19:19):
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,

(19:41):
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

(20:04):
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

(20:25):
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

(20:46):
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

(21:07):
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.

(21:29):
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

(21:51):
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

(22:13):
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

(22:35):
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

(22:58):
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.

(23:21):
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

(23:44):
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

(24:05):
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

(24:26):
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.

(24:48):
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

(25:09):
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,

(25:30):
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

(25:51):
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

(26:12):
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

(26:34):
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.

(26:54):
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

(27:16):
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

(27:36):
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

(27:59):
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.

(28:21):
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

(28:43):
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

(29:06):
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

(29:27):
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.

(29:49):
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

(30:11):
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

(30:32):
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

(30:54):
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

(31:15):
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,

(31:37):
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

(31:57):
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

(32:18):
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

(32:39):
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

(33:00):
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.

(33:23):
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

(33:44):
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?

(34:25):
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

(34:46):
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

(35:07):
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

(35:28):
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

(35:50):
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

(36:13):
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.

(36:37):
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

(36:58):
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

(37:19):
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

(37:39):
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

(38:03):
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

(38:24):
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

(38:44):
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

(39:06):
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.

(39:28):
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.

(39:52):
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

(40:13):
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

(40:37):
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.

(40:57):
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

(41:18):
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

(41:40):
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,

(42:00):
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

(42:21):
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

(42:42):
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

(43:03):
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.

(43:27):
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,

(43:49):
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

(44:10):
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

(44:31):
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

(44:54):
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

(45:14):
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

(45:36):
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

(45:58):
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

(46:21):
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

(46:44):
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,

(47:05):
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

(47:28):
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

(47:49):
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,

(48:11):
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

(48:32):
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.

(48:54):
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

(49:17):
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

(49:38):
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

(49:59):
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

(50:20):
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

(50:40):
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

(51:03):
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

(51:27):
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

(51:49):
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,

(52:12):
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.

(52:35):
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

(52:57):
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,

(53:19):
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

(53:40):
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?

(54:03):
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

(54:25):
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

(54:46):
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,

(55:07):
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.

(55:29):
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

(55:51):
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

(56:14):
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

(56:38):
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

(56:59):
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

(57:20):
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
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