6. No One Person Knows the Complete Combination to Get Into the Gold Vault of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Image courtesy the New York Fed

In addition to the cylinder, the security of the gold lies in the hands of the “control group,” comprised of two members of the New York Fed staff and one member of the New York Fed internal audit staff. These three people have to be present whenever gold is moved or a compartment (of which there are 122) is opened. The individual compartments are also secured by a padlock, two combination locks and an auditor’s seal.

For maximum security, no one person knows all the time and combinations to unlock the compartments, which means it requires three people to get into the stash.