How I Rob Banks

Chapter 25How to Crack a Safe

It all looks so easy, doesn't it? You watch a movie or TV show. During the build-up, they recruit the usual suspects: a getaway driver (or wheelman, as they are called in the industry), a mastermind, a computer nerd, an ex-soldier, and, somewhere in the group, a safecracker. He is there to do one job: get into the safe! Inevitably he will, and generally, the story calls for him to be shot or otherwise taken out. I see no sense in taking out the one person who can't be replaced easily, but I digress. Safe cracking is an art form, but like everything in life, it is a skill that can be learned.

There are many types of safes: for example, those awfully insecure hotel safes with a four-digit PIN and a key bypass that can be opened many ways, even with a swift thump on the top or side. Those safes can also be carried away if not secured correctly.

Then you have slightly better safes: they might have one of those fancy dials you see in the movies and are generally very heavy and bolted to a wall or a floor. There are also hidden versions, underneath floorboards or a painting in an office. This happens more than you'd imagine. I know a mayor's office in Essex, England, that has one, for example.

Then you have the huge safes you can walk into: room-sized vaults that have multiple locking systems and a myriad of defenses and look imposing.

But as I am sure you have learned from this book, everything is a compromise between usability and security. Safes and ...