A REAL LIFE "OCEAN'S ELEVEN": The 2003 ANTWERP DIAMOND HEISTIf you thought George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven character was smooth, check out the velvet finish on criminal mastermind Leonardo Notarbartolo. In February 2003, Notarbartolo and his gang, known as The School of Turin, pulled off one of the stealthiest heists in history. Daring to break into the famous World Diamond Center in Antwerp - where more than half of the world's diamonds are traded - the group made out with $100 million in jewels and other loot. HOW THEY DID IT: Not ones to rush into something this big, the Turin boys began laying the groundwork for the project three years prior. Posing as a company owner, Notarbartolo rented an office in the Center in 2000 and proceeded to obtain copies of master keys and learn how the alarm system worked. Then, the group waited for the perfect distraction - the Diamond Games tennis tournament on February 15-16, 2003. As Venus Williams wowed throngs of spectators (many of them Diamond Center employees and security guards), Nortarbartolo's crew used their duplicate keys to sneak into 123 of the building's underground vaults. Simply riding the elevator down to the basement, they deactivated a motion sensor and taped over light detectors. Then, instead of just covering the lenses of the CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, they avoided suspicion by replacing the tapes with previously recorded footage. Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting past the vault's 12-inch thick doors. Knowing the doors were equipped with internal magnets that would set off alarms if they detached, the robbers drilled through the bolts, carefully taped the magnets together, and moved them out of the way so that they wouldn't separate. After that, all they had to do was break the locks to the safety deposit boxes, rake in the diamonds, and then quietly flee the scene. To escape undetected, they memorized the surveillance patterns of the 24-hour police patrols outside the building. (Hey, they didn't have nicknames like “The King of Thieves” and “The Magician with the Keys” for nothing.) Amazingly, even though the heist took place early Sunday morning, authorities didn't discover anything suspicious until Monday. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Here's a tip for would-be thieves: If you leave the crime scene with a bag full of diamonds and then dispose of the bags on the road leading out of the city, make sure you don't leave your half-eaten sandwich in one of them. Inspectors used DNA evidence found on the food to nab Notarbartolo, and further DNA traces in the vault to arrest two other gang members. In 2005, he was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and fined $1.3 million. Meanwhile, none of the diamonds have been recovered. Some have microscopic inscriptions on them that would reveal their identity, but only if the thieves ever decide to sell them legally. (Photo and a very interesting in-depth story by Joshua Davis at Wired Magazine) BRUTE STRENGTH AND NUMBERS: THE SECURITAS DEPOT ROBBERYFebruary must be a good month for crime. In February 2006, three years after the Antwerp diamond heist, a Securitas money depot in England was robbed by a band of thieves who coordinated simultaneous kidnappings. They made off with a jaw-dropping $92.5 Million (US) in cash - most of it unmarked. Today, it's considered the largest cash robbery in British history. (Photo: PA, via Telegraph) HOW THEY DID IT: Picture this: You're driving along a road in Stockbury, England, when the whirring sirens of an unmarked police car startle you from your evening commute. You roll down your window and chipper police officer tells you he needs to speak with you - in his vehicle. Oops, you've just been kidnapped. That's how Colin Dixon was unwittingly reeled into one of the biggest heists of the century. The crooks handcuffed Dixon - a manager at the Securitas cash collection and money transport company - and told him his family would be killed if he didn't comply. Meanwhile, fellow gang members abducted Dixon's wife and son, posing once again as police offices with a fake story about “an accident involving your husband”. The manager led the thieves to the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, where the criminals- wielding guns and cloaked in knit caps - accosted another 14 employees and made off with a giant trick full of loot. While the event was certainly traumatic for all the victims, fortunately, no one was injured. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Good old-fashioned police work. Apparently, it takes a lot of accomplices to stage multiple kidnappings. In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with the crime, including drivers, face police, a car dealer, a salesman, a roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Guess where she's headed? BRAZIL'S BIG DIG: THE TUNNEL RATS BANK ROBBERYSometimes there's a light at the end of the tunnel, other times, there's $72 million (US). Such was the case in August 2005, when a group of criminals in Fortaleza, Brazil, used their 260-ft. long secret passageway to make off with some serious loot. The trick: Spending three months excavating the thing and tediously sneaking vanloads of dirt past the thousands of workers in the busy urban area above. (Photo: AP, via SMH) HOW THE DID IT: For the 23 or so suspected gang members involved in this operation, the first step was posing as a company that was renting an office building- which just happened to be located near a bank. Cleverly enough, the crooks set up an artificial business as an artificial turf com - called Grama Sintetica, complete with artificial employees and fancy logo. For weeks, a group of men worked around the clock digging a tunnel leading two city blocks over to the Central Bank building Somehow, the process was so shrewdly executed that Grama Sintetica's neighbors failed to notice that a van was transporting several loads of dirt away from the building each day. And if their stealthy moves don‘t seem impressive enough, consider the tunnel itself: In it, the gang installed electric lighting, air conditioning, and wood-paneled walls (to make sure the tunnel didn't collapse). To pull off the heist, the gang managed to break through the bank's three-and-a-half-foot-wide vault floor, using (as police later discovered) a bolt cutter, a drill, an electric saw, and a blow torch. Over the course of the weekend, they eventually removed five containers full of bank notes, weighing nearly 7,700 lbs. Unbelievably, nobody discovered the theft until that Monday. All told, the heist required experts in electrical engineering, global positioning systems, excavation, and, of course, theft. The most brilliant idea, though? Picking a crowded, noisy area in Brazil for the heist, reasoning that no one would notice the sound of tools and digging in the daily commotion. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: The thieves did a good job of covering their tracks (they used a white powder at the crime scene to hide fingerprints), but apparently, tunneling underneath nations is a little trickier. Attempts to transport the money out of the country using truck transports and chartered planes failed, and the assumed mastermind behind the theft, Luis Ribeiro, eventually turned up murdered. So far, the police have arrested a few dozen suspected members of the gang. NOT-SO-GOOD FELLAS: THE LUFTHANSA AIRPORT HEISTIn 1978, Lufthansa Airlines employee Louis Werner knew two important things: First, that a Lufthansa airplane occasionally transported unmarked bills from West Germany to New York's Kennedy Airport, where they were temporarily held in nothing more than cardboard boxes locked inside a vault. Second, that he owed about $20,000 in gambling debts to his bookie. HOW THEY DID IT: The wrong way - with brute force. Even though it became source material for the 1990 film “GoodFellas” (plus several books and even a few copycat crimes), the Lufthansa Airport Heist was a brutal affair. Using a few helpful tips from Werner, infamous crime lord Jimmy Burke put together an operation that involved several phases - breaking into the airport's cargo terminal, handcuffing employees, and subduing guards. Once inside the vault, they found 72 boxes of cash and jewelry totaling about $6 million (instead of the $2 million they'd expected). As for the getaway, the gang used bloody force to make sure no employees reported the crime until long after they'd left the airport. The entire robbery took only 64 minutes, but it became one of the most complex and lucrative heists in U.S. history. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Unlike the other heists, in which some gang members fled the country to hide, the Lufthansa Airlines gangsters stuck around. Not only that, but they made the mistake of displaying their newfound wealth a bit too obviously. The police had a pretty good idea who was behind the crime, and it wasn't long before snitches implicated Werner and a few others. Many of the participants were murdered before they could squeal, while still others became informants and joined the Witness Protection Program. Werner, who organized but didn't participate in the actual theft, was the only one convicted for a role in the heist. |
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The article above, written by John Brandon, appeared in the Jan - Feb 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission. Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today! |
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Comments (6)
FlawlessBook
As for the rest, it seems like brute force, large numbers of people involved, and having the ego to spend what you stole on extravagant stuff are always a surefire way to screw things up. I prefer smart heisters. :P
The energy to get here far exceeds the total energy/material value of any given solar system - including ours.
Unless they're looking for pets, or like frying ants with magnifying glasses, there's no nefarious reason for a superior race to mess with Earth.
As to slave labor - come on, the automotive industry is well on it's way of completely manufacturing a car via robots - why would a space faring race need human labour.
The first strike hypothesis is to debate. If the advance species is absolutely heartless, then it's a good safe strategy. But even us puny humans seem to be slowly outgrowing that mode of thinking. Without any data (either way) on how ET's think, it's all conjecture at this point, so why worry about something you can't control.
Seems like Hawkins finally got around to seeing "Battlefield Earth" and now is panicking (or desperate to have something with pseudo-value to publish).
Hawkings, even in his heyday (60's/70's which is long long long gone) was pretty much a two shot wonder.
His bigger claim to fame is more because of his watered down physic's for dummies books and the fact that he beat the odds by surviving (if you can call it that) a disease that's usually fatal).
He hasn't made the current top 100 physicists list for decades.
Sure Hawkings might have been smart during his prime (like most Physicists, they all peak early in their careers) but it doesn't make him a expert on ET's.
No matter the elegance of their customs or deference of their tactics, the aliens would be scorned by the greatest percentage of our population. There is no need for Disney or Cameron to bear this out. No one is astonished by human's long history of intolerance.
My real credentials are firmly hidden behind the anonymity of the net.
So take your pick, I'm either a lifetime subscriber to Popular Mechanics and BS my way thru the intertubes, or perhaps I hold a PhD or two (maybe even one in a offshoot of physics), have numerous publications to my name (nothing for popular consumption, written with the goal of complete obfuscation of even the simplest of sentences), and enjoy the Professor Emeritus title from not one but three relatively well known Uni's (so unfortunately, I too am past my academic prime and reside firmly in the commercial world of research for pay).
So chose which ever one makes you feel better or make one up - it matters not to me.
I mean, look at how people get all screwed tight over debates on websites like Neatorama and Youtube. I'm betting we'd have a bunch of people basically going f$%*ing crazy or despondent over not knowing how to react to such a universal view-changing happening. So yeah. Let's all shut the hell up about finding aliens and maybe try to feed some hungry people.
Physicists should know physics. Hawking (famous for calculating the physics of black holes) should know about the energy costs of pulling resources out of a gravity well.
The current cost for a space shuttle mission is roughly $400M. Its lifting capacity is 20,400kg to low earth orbit, 3,810kg to geostationary orbit. In other words, it costs about $16,000/kg to lift something to LEO, and about $105,000/kg to reach GTO.
For comparison, gold currently sells at about $37,000/kg. In other words, the effort of lifting something into LEO is worth roughly half the item's weight in gold. Lifting it to GTO is worth roughly three times its weight in gold.
Meanwhile, every element you can find on earth is floating around in the asteroid belt, with essentially no gravity well to overcome, and surrounded by vastly less crap that needs to be mined out of the way.
Besides, the military assessment of an interstellar invasion is ridiculous:
- Your initial intelligence is probably decades or centuries out of date.
- You can't get more complete or recent intelligence without going there.
- Your production base and reinforcements will be decades or centuries away by the time your invasion force hits the target star system, so you'd better bring everything you need to build your equipment from the raw materials up.
- You don't know what kind of defenses your target will be able to field by the time you get there, so you may be facing anything from nukes to nanotech to things you don't even know exist.
- Your invasion force will have to devote considerable resources to defending its supply and production base from god-knows-what kinds of attack.
- Any of your supply or production technology that falls into the hands of the locals will give them just that much more capacity to wipe you out.
- And it's only a matter of luck whether the locals will have their own population outside the planetary gravity well by the time you arrive.
Seriously, it's like saying, "here's a pile of newspapers from 1930. Go design and outfit a fleet of ships to invade China. You only get one chance, and we'll check back with you in another 80 years."
More than likely, any civilization that submits to collectivism (and its twin children nationalism and racism) will not only tear themselves apart with war, but they will succumb to the economic destruction that is socialism. Willingness to violate the rights of individuals will lead them to their doom (as is the case on our own planet right now).
-Yes.
Yes, humans have behaved badly in the past when arriving at new territories with peoples of lesser military technology. Yes, some current peoples might do the same given a similar opportunity. BUT generally speaking we have become more sensitised to the issues and ethics of mistreating other peoples. Why wouldn't peoples of another planet?
In order to develop the sort of technology and coordinate the effort to travel from one inhabited planet to another would require 1) A people secure enough and supportive enough of free-thought to allow innovation and 2) A high level of planet wide cooperation to bring together the resources needed to take such a journey. The trip itself would be so lengthy, they would also have to be so self-sufficient that they would have little need of our resources specifically.
I remember an era of thought when we looked out in space and anticipated contact with peaceful and wise sapient beings. This may or may not come about, but what does it say about us that we now look out and see only fear and a need for violence. A bear is neither good nor bad, it behaves as it needs to and can be violent or peaceful depending upon the circumstances. Perhaps we should approach extra-terrestrial beings like bears, carefully but worthy of respect and the possiblity of a peaceful interaction.
Whats the proof that the aliens would leave our planet without any damage done to the species of it?
I think you people haven't studied about "Alien Species Invasion" in biology, it shows that when other species from a different place comes to a new place - it becomes a threat to the original species and to the ECOSYSTEM which results in the destruction of the whole area including it's living and non-living components.
its not compulsory that there should only be friendly thing up in the universe because if they are intelligent like us they can also think about destruction .And when both the species from our planet and from the outer space comes in contact they can cause problems to each other also.
Short of Warp drives, worm holes, or some other fantasy mode of interplanetary travel, Earth will not be invaded by aliens the way the New World was conquered by the Europeans.
If physical contact with extraterrestrial entities ever occurs, I would be more concerned that the alien life forms were able to survive on Earth. Did they evolve on a planet with a similar atmosphere, gravity and chemical composition? Does Earth have too much or too little nitrogen or oxygen for them to breathe? Will they be able to survive Earth's rate of ultraviolet radiation?
I doubt disease will be as serious a threat from ET as it was from the Europeans when they moved into the Americas. The native populations were the same species--their immune systems were not able to tackle the diseases that Europe had survived. So it seems unlikely that any alien viruses or microbes will decimate the human population--they probably would not recognize us as useable hosts.
whats the proof that the aliens are not advanced in technology like us?
just think that the aliens have a special technology by which they can hide themselves and can prevent being detected by our 'modern technology'! they can surely be a threat to us .
don't think only about physics, think in the way of biology, of nature
The alien species invasion model works on this planet because all the plants and animals come from the same planet. They may have evolved in geographically separated ecosystems, but they did not evolve on a completely different world.
The odds of Earth and some extra solar world being so similar that life forms from one can exist on the other without bringing its own life support are pretty low.
Despite what we were raised seeing on TV, there is no guarantee that alien life forms on different planets are will be bipeds resembling humans in exotic costumes speaking 20th century English and mating with Captain Kirk.
And now I read this article.
Makes me think.
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/heel-tastic-review-amp-free-trial-2160635.html
With all those 100.000's of possible lifeforms out there, there are just as many possibilities of how these aliens would act upon finding other alien lifeforms. All the logic in the world that we humans can unleach on that theme ever stays human logic and nothing more than that.
So I would say it makes complete sence to us humans to be very quiet and not stirr any attention, because eve peaceful gestures by aliens could completely accidentally mean the end of us or them. But that has nothing to do with any logical reasoning on my part. That is just one possibility out of a universe full of unknowns...
... a good point. Humans don't follow the Non Agression principle. We might be regarded as a possible future competitor and be destroyed as a matter of course. Better to keep our heads down until we learn better manners.
That's a fair point to make. It is extremely difficult to cross interstellar space. But not impossible. Generational starships could do it.
[dave] "If physical contact with extraterrestrial entities ever occurs, I would be more concerned that the alien life forms were able to survive on Earth."
No. If an alien species COULD cross interstellar space, they would be so advanced that any ill-intentions towards us would be species-ending. Nothing we could do about it. Even a hundred years of difference in military technology on Earth is monumental. Imagine a few thousand years of alien superiority.
Some of you, the idiots that cite costs and value of our resources, need to remember...
It doesn't cost "aliens" nearly the same amount to launch a ship, remember?? they are farther along than we are.. Could be just like taking the car out for a ride..
How do you KNOW how much value our resources would have to them??
Perhaps something like GOLD or even plant life would be so rare to them to justify the visit/domination/destruction of earth.
Supply and demand, some of you need to go back to school and stop pretending to be smarter than Google makes you look...
As for me I got my PhD in Bullshit detection and NOOB/TROLL spotting.
I like your field of study.
Maybe you should reread my comments. I made no reference to military superiority. Or even what alien intentions would or would not do.
I was saying, there is no guarantee that a planet hospitable to lifeforms that evolved there would be habitable to a lifeform which evolved elsewhere.
Unless the aliens came from a vitrually identical planet with the same gasses in its atmosphere, a similar temperature range and radiation exposure rate, surviving on Earth without a LOT of life support equipment would not be very likely.
And for all of you who feel “fittest of the fit” is how things must be, then remember that Hawkings probably would not have made the “fittest” list in such a world and not lived. We do live in a violent world, but cultures are becoming more civil everyday. Even 3rd world countries have “technological superior” countries sending doctors to heal the sick and even plastic surgeons to fix things like cleft pallets (non-life threatening) all in the name of compassion, not conquest.
For those that appeal to Hawkings being right because he is smarter than any of us- then what about other physicists who are just as smart but disagree? Hawkings is very intelligent, but he is not the only intelligent physicist in the world. Do, we measure the size of their brains or something to see who is right? :o)
you wrote the following:
"What nonsense. The energy to get here far exceeds the total energy/material value of any given solar system - including ours"
Have you considered the possibility that any advanced races might have the ability to create and use dark matter? If so, they would have almost limitless energy for touring around the galaxy etc.
Just a thought.
Hawkings' real gift to people is the popularization of physics-by writing in layman's terms, and breaking down insanely complex formula heavy physics, so that yes, the average joe can dig what's going on inthe world and universe. And that's pretty cool. But I still like his appearances more! Imagine my surprise when for The Simpsons, I found out that the creators didn't just use the same kind of voicebox-they got Hawkings', who so obviously had such a ball with the whole thing. That's why he's pretty darn cool.
Say, they had some superfantastic way of getting here, and they were way beyond our technology. Our measly resources wouldn't justify it when those resources can be had more easily elsewhere.
I picture it like Douglas Adams' view. We will simply be in the way of a Volgon superhighway, if anything.
Stephen Hawkings is right in advising us not to rock the boat, but what are the odds that we would be of any use to any other race? Zip.
I think that Stephen Hawking has been watching
DVDs of the film Independence Day too often. Great entertainment, but the premise of malevolent aliens is rubbish.
Here we all are talking about this, some of us chastising a brilliant man when we have no business doing so, we need to listen and look to all the signs, if you do then you will understand that his claim isn't that far fetched. I cant stand when I here the words “Can't Happen” or ‘Can’t” or “Un likely”, That's the exact back hill Ignorance of many civilizations that have been Invaded, conquered, and destroyed over the course of history in many battles, we are maturing as Humans so we must act as mature humans and keep an open mined to the what it’s! or possibilities, if you look at our nature as humans…. Anything is possible! and or “can” happen.
Mr Hawkins is just telling us to watch our “6” and to not be such a rush to find what we don’t understand “YET” key word”. It would be people like Mr Hawkins that will be the conduit to our understanding. Remember .... Anything is possible and we as humans “Can–do-anything”.
J3fx-jeff
Many of the comments here talk in high terms about non-aggression principals, but these are our moralities. An alien species will have its own moralities, that likely have no relationship to our own. Perhaps they value hunting, conquest, water, who know? The point Hawking makes is valid, and our own history of conquest bears this out. No one in the middle east valued oil until industrial nations found a use for it, and then it was a land grab. Native Americans didn't own the land, until Europeans arrived, etc...
im sorry if im going to long on this comment and im sorry for my bad english.
What im trying to say in general is that we are becoming more closer to being like them. becoming not only technologicaly, more advanced, but also more spiritually advanced.
We have huge concentration camps called meat industry.....
If we have no remorse for our cousins how could we have for "animals" from another planet???
They would be right to rid the Earth of pest called humans!
First in conjunction to the basic idea that aliens would want the resources of earth someone made the point of the same precious metals being in our asteroid belt. If beings with the capacity of such great traveling distance needed resources they would take more than just what earth had to offer they would essentially take over our solar system, wiping us out simply because we are the only intelligent life here, that we know of anyway.
Since hawking's ideas, biology and physics have grouped potential intelligent life into i believe its 3 classes. class 1 controls the complete power of the planet, meaning they master their immediate resources. 2 controls a star meaning they have used up their planetary resources or realized it was more beneficial to skip those resources and go for completely harnessing a sun. And the third class harnesses the power of multiple stars.
More than likely if hostile aliens come here they will be of type 3 class due to thier ability to travel across multiple galaxies and would be looking to consume not only this planet but the galaxy.
and to simply also try and make the argument that it would cost them more resources to invade our galaxy than to leave us alone. first this group is clearly nomadic meaning they either move or they die. secondly you are basing thier technology and resources on our technological frame of reference and the technology we have currently is just rediculously wasteful, more intelligent life as someone else said would be using resources and techniques unfathomable to our minds right now.
The truth just is that there is absolutely no reason why an advanced civilization would come to earth without the intent of harming us. We cant contribute to thier civilization other than resources we truely have little or no control over and we would not be smart enough to defend ourselves either.