Coolest Safecracking Scene

>What's your favorite safecracking scene

Probably not what you were looking for, but my favorite is probably a scene in a recent episode of the syndicated show She Spies; They need to get into a safe in the floor. They uncover the safe and the partner who is the lock expert is excited to discover that the safe is a new style that's supposed to be uncrackable. She starts getting out her hi-tech tools and cracking her knuckles in anticipation of tackling this new challenge. Before she can start, her partner reaches over and opens the unlocked safe, revealing it to be empty. :)

I like it because it pokes fun at the assumption that the safe will always be locked and that it will take a great deal of work to get into it. Kind of like scenes where the hero assumes that he'll have to break down a door and the sidekick discovers that it's not locked.

>and what did you think of the safecracking article on Howstuffworks.com?

Very interesting, although I found the part about discovering the numbers by graphing where the click of the contact points is heard, to be a little vague. I don't know if they did it on purpose so as not to give people all the information to crack safes, if they didn't explain it very well, or if I just didn't understand it. I didn't get why the clicks for the contact points would be heard at different positions depending on the starting position of the dial. I would think that the clicks would be heard in the same positions on the dial regardless of the starting position, since the drive cam is being turned directly by the dial. There has to be some other interaction that causes a difference depending on the other wheels being turned, but the article didn't elaborate on this part. At first I thought they were referring to the clicks made by the wheel notches passing the fence, but the more I re-read it, that didn't seem to be the case.

I did notice one small omission though; After finding the contact points, the article mentions "parking" the wheels by turning the dial to the number opposite the contact points, but it neglects to mention that in order to be able to pick up a wheel on each trip past that number, you need to turn the dial several times in the opposite direction, so that all the wheels are turning together. Then when you stop at that number, all the drive pins will be touching and turning the dial the other way will pick up one wheel on each rotation.

I can also think of a few ways to design a lock to defeat this method of safecracking; Sheath the drive pins in a plastic-like substance to reduce the noise when they make contact, or add a small racket that clicks as the dial is turned, obscuring the click of the drive pins. Instead of using gravity to move the fence into the notches, have it so that the fence only moves when you attempt to turn the handle. If the wheels aren't aligned properly, the handle will only move part of the way, not enough to slide back the bolt and open the safe, but far enough to slide a lever into one of several notches on the drive cam. There's nothing to indicate the contact points unless the handle is put under tension, but doing so prevents the dial from being turned.

As for electronic locks, the fingerprint method can be easily defeated by simply pressing all of the buttons after you've closed the safe. Using software to feed it numbers could be effectively defeated by the manufacturer by putting in a 30 minute delay after an incorrect combination has been entered more than 2-3 times. While this wouldn't prevent this method from working, it would make it so time consuming as to be impractical.