The U. S. Bullion Repository

Fort Knox, Kentucky. Yes, you read that right. This legend is based on the premise that the Bullion Depository is probably the single most secure place on the planet. Some of its security measures are a mystery, but it is known that no one, not even the President, is allowed on the property, except the U. S. Mint Police stationed inside.

The closest anyone can get to it is Highway 31, about 400 yards from the building. The security consists of multiple fences, the innermost electrified, alarms, cameras, armed guards, and the nearby Fort Knox units: 30,000 active troops who train every day with Apache helicopter gunships, M-1 Abrams tanks, armored personnel carriers and heavy demolition.

This doesn’t account for the unknown security measures, which probably include motion-activated minigun turrets, landmines, pressure sensors, snipers, and that’s before you even get inside.

Awful lot of security for some gold bricks, wouldn’t you say? Unless there are other things inside. The combination to the vault is not known by any one person, but is comprised of 10 combinations, each known by only one official working in the building. There are pistol ranges inside, a gym and dojo, and the vault is lined with solid granite. The gold resides in separate, small rooms each fitted with a solid steel door.

The main vault door is 22 tons of steel and can withstand a direct hit from a 2 kiloton nuclear warhead. The Depository has housed a copy of the Magna Carta, the Hungarian crown jewels, the Crown of St. Stephen, the U. S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and various other historical documents from all over the world.

The legend states that there is a special room somewhere in the vault that does not house gold or artifacts such as cited above, but houses, instead, the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant (complete with a “Do Not Touch” sign), satellite pictures proving that the Ararat Anomaly is Noah’s Ark, and the True Cross, complete with dried blood that has been analyzed as consisting of several strains of DNA, one of them encoded not on a double helix, but a triple helix.