My family’s legal documents are being kept somewhere at home, and its kinda weird to think about, like zero security, I doubt its even fireproof, definitely not waterproof, some flood is gonna destroy it.
My sister inherited my dad’s big fireproof gun safes and things like birth certificates are in there (at this point maybe they should be on our person).
Papers, please.
Yea… I feel like this isn’t just one country, as technology gets more developed, every government now wants to use more biometrics, face scanning, fingerprinting, mandatory ID. Eventually, we might DNA checkpoints to verify people.
And eventually everyone will be identified by a chip in their hand or or picture of your face. Sounds too much like the mark of the beast. Right? Thousands of years old prophecy. Not gonna do it.
Banks have made it really difficult to rent safety deposit boxes lately. It used to be a common account benefit but I can’t find any within a reasonable distance of me since 2023, and none which are included as an account benefit. A fireproof safe is good enough and the types of documents I put in it aren’t truly irreplaceable anyways, just really hard/annoying to replace. I doubt many people use their fireproof safe for truly valuable items that would be attractive to thieves. My fireproof safe doesn’t even have a proper lock.
Single person, living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment. Even I have a small fire safe.
Important documents and hard drives with photos are in a fire- and water-proof safe. It’s also just easier to find them since we never move it anywhere so passports and certs are all in there.
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: CaSO4·2H2O .
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.
I put everything in our fire safe in silicone bags so I hope that does the trick.
That’s exactly what I’d recommend! The contents will crisp long before a quality silicone bag will.
Yeah, though our hard drive backup will fairly quickly become trash, I think.
Probably, but it’s the good ol’ cost-benefit analysis. It’ll survive so much longer than if it wasn’t protected at at all, but the next-level fire protection that would increases its chances is really expensive.
What if you were to put a bunch of silica packets or beads in the safe? Or put an air tight container inside the safe
You’d need a ton of silica gel, pounds of it, to capture steam as fast as it is generated. Your best bet would be a water tight, temperature resistant container like silicone bags for documents. I’d recommend a properly fireproof safe (read: $$$) or planning for potential losses for anything larger.
Store your valuables in a waterproof bag hidden in your toilet tank. Can’t get destroyed to fire or flood.
Zip Lock bag + Silica Packets --> Inside a Fire-resistant document bag --> Inside a Fire-resistant safe?
I don’t use either, I have a small plastic folder for kinda important documents but tbh I can’t really think of any documents I would actually need that are not fairly easy to get replaced.
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?
Inside the cinder block of course
I always wanted a hollowed out book as a child. So I took a steak knife and a random book I figured was big enough, and started painstakingly carving out the center. I still have it somewhere, it’s kinda cool, but now I really would rather have a bookshelf hidden door, or maybe behind a painting, hiding a secret lair.
I’m picturing you having a huge wall of books. One of the books has money in it, but you’re forced to search each one everytime you want the money because you keep forgetting which book it is
But it always happens to be the book a new guest wants to check out…
I’ve considered a safe, but I’ve heard the paper contents may mold if left in there too long. Currently too lazy to manage that.
You need some dessicant, they make packages of it specifically for managing humidity in safes. It’s real low maintenance.
I have all my important documents in a fire rated safe mostly because whenever I need to get one of them I remember “oh yeah I put that in my safe”. I don’t own anything valuable that could fit in the safe. As someone who works on safes though I would recommend anyone who wants one for burglary protection to bolt it down if possible and don’t show anyone you have it. I’ve seen the aftermath people’s 200+ pound safes dragged through the house and out the door. Also if you own guns and have kids I would absolutely recommend a safe to put them in. Check your local laws as well because here in California starting in 2026 gun owners can be charged if they don’t have their guns locked securely and someone in their household who should not have access to guns gets access to their guns.
I’m not a very legal person, but I can’t think of any documents that I can’t just request a copy.
If my apartment were to burn down I would have bigger problems to worry about, like homelessness and losing all my tech that took me years to aquire.
Sure. But it might be easier if you had a birth certificate or your insurance documents at the bank. It’s just one less hassle to prove who you are to have someone make you a new copy.
Arguably this is less of an issue with digital documents.
I actually asked because I was more of thinking about storing journals, but didn’t feel like elaborating in the post because nobody ever reads the body of a post anyways lol
Not true! Especially about this subject. Until I read this, I saw your asain letters in your name and im sorry, but that immediately increased my suspicion that you were a scammer or something! I thought you could probably track our IP addresses -and find where we live and try to get our safe type so you could learn how to break in that specific safe.- if we didn’t have a VPN. Ive known people that could do that stuff… anyway, im not racist or anything, but knowing this is a bout journeling humanizes you more.
Edit: I wouldnt tell you shit and I think that anyone that does is a complete idiot
LOL
It’s from an Anime 😭 (Steins;Gate, characters are Kanji)
I guess it also kinda works as a Sinophobia-filter. Not to point fingers, but even amonst many of the western “liberal”/“leftists”, I feel like subconcious bias is still a thing. So I’m just intentionally trying to de-sensitize people to the idea of Asia. I get it, a lot of scammers, but I mean… I do not judge every Indian for a few dipshits that do scam. Neither should people be judging based on my username lol. But I get it, everyone has these implicit biases.
I’m Chinese-American in case you’re wondering, kinda feeling underrepresented in the fediverse, which seems to be westerner-dominated. Which is why I feel like I wanna be here, to sort of “fix” the underrepresentation issue.
Gun safe. Water proof, fire proof and locked. 200 lbs won’t be walking out so easily.
200 lbs won’t be walking out so easily
Unless it’s bolted to something solid a 90kg safe could be walked out pretty easily by two people or one person with a trolley.
Yup bolted down.
So ill bring my bolt cutters and portable torch
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.
At least it was safe
Badumching
^rimshot
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.
Nice try, Danny Ocean.
For guns, I picked up a decent one from a government surplus auction. The keypad had a couple numbers that didn’t work and someone cut out the battery holder. But 10 bucks fixed both of those. So I got a $500 safe for about $45.
Less about burglars or fires and more about curious young hands.
I live alone but I have a gun safe because in my state if I get robbed and can’t demonstrate that I did my due dilligence to protect the guns from theives I could end up getting arrested
Dont actually talk about this stuff man. Its not the nerds that care where your important stuff is, or that you are in possession of it, but they are selling that information to someone that might do something. Actual thugs. The guy who brag posted -in this thread- about a big heavy safe… so dumb, thats exactly what they want to hear. There are literal safe cracking gangs. Its only TV but have you seen sons of anarchy? There are these people out there. So many bored degenerates that also have a lot of money, somehow.
Its great to have a safe, just dont volunteer the info to strangers on the internet maybe. This is the voice of reason.
If they’re competent enough to find me and crack my safe they can find better things to rob than my $300 10-22
