The home safe is more about fire survival.
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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I've got my important data encrypted and backed up weekly to the cloud.
I used to have a 1985 sailboat where some previous owner had installed a safe. I guess cash was more important when cruising abroad 30+ years ago.
I have a caravan now. The caravan door is flimsy enough to tear open with your bare hands. I'd like to put something bolted to a cupboard wall just to lock up our electronic devices while we're out and about.
Well, I do I have tucked into a random bookshelf one of those "World Atlas" book safes that everyone already knows is a storage box and not a book, because they've been sold virtually unchanged as far as I can tell since at least the early 1990s. As a little treat to anyone observant who notices this and thinks they're so damn clever, inside I have nothing but a scaled down 3D printed replica of a cinder block.
It is astoundingly unlikely anyone will find where my valuables are actually hidden in my house, nor am I going to admit it on the internet.
It is astoundingly unlikely anyone will find where my valuables are actually hidden in my house, nor am I going to admit it on the internet.
In the mattress, huh?
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Keep in mind that many "fireproof" safes misrepresent their capabilities and the fireproofing itself can severely damage or destroy safe contents in a fire.
Tl;dr: the contents slow cook and soak in a mixture of water and whatever else was present for hours to days. Depending on the severity and duration of the fire, plastics will melt, metals will tarnish, and unprotected paper, wood, and similar contents will be destroyed.
Most more affordable safes are fireproofed via a layer of drywall material. Drywall is composed of gypsum, otherwise known as calcium sulfate dihydrate: CaSO~4~·2H~2~O .
The fireproofing doesn't come from any direct insulating properties but the hydration of the gypsum. When exposed to enough heat, the water bound to calcium sulfate begins to unbind and boil out. The interior of the safe will remain at 100°C or less as the external heat energy from the fire is absorbed by this dehydration/phase change process, releasing water as steam.
This turns your safe into a big steamer/(low) pressure cooker. The safe boils during the fire, then sits and "cooks" for hours afterwards as the area cools down. The safe keypad will be inoperative, so you'll be reliant on the backup key working. If that mechanism is damaged, the manufacturer or a locksmith will need to open it. No matter what, the contents will remain in a hot, damp environment for hours to days.
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Gun safe. Water proof, fire proof and locked. 200 lbs won't be walking out so easily.
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Nice try, Danny Ocean.
I have a home safe that doesn’t lock properly. To replace it would cost me everything that I’d put in a home safe.
We have a fireproof / waterproof safe box we store documents like that in (essentially this). It's not going to keep an intruder from getting the documents if they wanted to (they could just take the box with them and smash it open, it's certainly not good as an anti-theft device) but it's waterproof and fireproof and that's more what we were concerned with.
It's worth noting that these aren't rated to protect documents from a prolonged intense fire; if your house burns to the ground, it's probably not going to help.
if your house burns to the ground
There's a fire station like... idk... less than 10 minute drive away (probably like 5 minute drive I think), I hope that's quick enough
then again, what are the odds of actually having a fire? 👀
as someone who lives 5 minutes from a fire station and had a house fire. 5 minutes is a loooong time to have a house fire.
put a hotdog in the flame of a campfire for 5 minutes. then add another 3 minutes for actions taken after they arrive on scene.
is your hotdog edible?
That was our feeling, too - if we did lose everything, we have digital backups of those documents. The chances are obviously low of having a fire, but that's not really the point... the intent is to plan for the "what if" scenario. If you want 100% fire safety, you store things off-site, but this was an acceptable level of risk for the cost, for us. You mention floods; these boxes are rated for much longer in water, so they might be applicable to your use-case.
My mom bought me a fireproof safe because she was giving me some jewelry to hold for my kids, and she also had some documents for me to keep.
It sat on the floor under a bed for years. Then I decided to get appraisals of the jewelry to add it to my homeowners insurance.
When I opened the safe, everything in it was moist and moldy.
Nothing important was lost or damaged, but it was nasty as hell.
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Most of my legal documents can be reproduced easily or they are in a folder I can take with me. Apart from that I don't own anything of value.
I just moved into a place with a (gun?) safe I don't know how to open. So technically I have one.
Is it an old fashioned one with a number wheel? Try 0-25-0 or 25-50-25. I learned that one from Richard Feynman.
Care to explain?
Long story, but TL;DR: These are the factory settings for most older combination locks.
Feynman in one of his books explained that he picked locks as a hobby during and after WW2. So he knew how to pick locks, but his method for combination locks was not practical, basically a guessing game. At some point, a safe (I think installed on special orders by some overseer of the Manhattan project) was locked and no one knew the combination. So someone sent for a locksmith to open it. Feynman was hoping to find this locksmith, so he could ask him how to open such a safe. But, when he came to the room with the safe, the safe was open and the locksmith gone.
So he did what any sane person would do; he found out the name of the locksmith, started following him around for a bit and ultimately bought him a drink in a bar. When he introduced himself the locksmith recognized his name, Feynman being notorious for his shenigans including lockpicking. So he asks the locksmith how to open this kind of safe, and the locksmith responds "no idea". So Feynman asks if he had no idea, why did he take the job and how did he open it. Then the locksmith explains that he was just going to show up, make some noise and all that, and then explain that he couldn't crack the safe, here's my bill thank you very much. But since he knew that these safes were all deliverd from the factory with either the standard combinations 0-25-0 or 25-50-25, he tried those first and that's how he opened the safe.
Feynman found it baffling that someone had a big heavy safe custom installed for him, but was then too lazy to change the combination. He also went around the labs (where a lot of files realting to the Manhattan project were kept), and found out that quite a few combination locks on the file cabinets were still set to default.
Nope, digital, and it beeps a lot if you mess with it.
Maybe search the lock picking lawyer's channel on youtube for the make and model.
Bruh you gotta update. Lemmy now deserve to know, you owe us the update. Open it lol. Don't leave us hanging on a cliffhanger
I doubt there's anything interesting. We did wonder whether the "numbers" were related. It's certainly got character!
The previous owner of our house had one, but luckily they took it with them
Jokes on .. whoever. My legal documents are not in one place I can’t even find them when I need to.
You guys have documents?
Yes, am an immigrant and Naturalized US Citizen. Papers are very important. Especially when we live in the "papers please" era
Oh good lord yeah you have to keep those now.
I'm also an immigrant (though EU Schengen zone). I have a little plastic ID card (actually two, one from my home country and one from my resident country) but that's about it for identification.
I guess I also have my rent- and work contracts ... though I'm not quite sure where they are.
Does my vaccination card count as a document?
Everyone should have a cheap fire safe. For the documents that are super difficult to replace, if nothing else.
What documents are difficult to replace?
Birth cert, immunization records, high school and college diplomas. Name change docs. The list is endless.
For example because my birth state is anti-trans I would have to fight just to receive a copy of my birth certificate. They would make me come to that state in person and still may have ro wait weeks.
Birth cert, immunization records, high school and college diplomas. Name change docs. The list is endless.
The list reads like it only applies to backwards/undeveloped countries. Birth certificates aren’t a thing here, immunization records are in my digital patient file, I must have a paper diploma somewhere, although I have no idea where it is and I never had a need for it. The last time I had to prove I have a BSc. I just downloaded the signed PDF from the education service website. Any name changes would just be recorded in the government’s basic administration. Even things like the deed to my house is registered with the government and no one would ever ask me for the physical piece of paper, even when selling it.
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I keep my valuables in an old CRT television that weighs more than sisyphus's boulder. No one's stealing that.
Thanks, now I know how to quickly burglarlize your house /kidding
But you don't know which CRT television.
I do not have a document safe. We keep all those documents in a cigar box.
Are your cigars in the safe?
They're in the humidor. And by "humidor" I mean "Ziploc bag". And by "Ziplock" I mean "Aldi knock-off zipper-seal".
We have a free online storage that was founded by the notaries in my country. I think nearly all important legal documents have a copy that is kept by the government.
For a large part of my life, I have always fantasized about owning anything so important, valuable, or secret that I had to store it in some sort of vault
Currently, I do not
you should buy jewelry. You never wear it, then when you get older, someone will kill you for it. That's the point of jewelry.
Yeah, but I like being alive
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I have a 7.62x51 belt ammo box that I use for important documents. It's easy to find, relatively disaster tolerant, and it has a carry handle.
I have a fire resistant safe.