There are a lot of places on this planet which are secret. The secrecy may be for many different reasons but it exists nevertheless. I know by now you are thinking I am talking about secret laboratories, bases  and such and while I may be mentioning some of them what I am going to tell you about is not a laboratory, not part of the military, but part of the federal prison system. It is known as the ADX Florence Prison. In it are some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States. It houses the Unabomber, and so called terrorist who was said to be the mastermind behind the World Trade Center destruction, the shoe bomber, the Olympic Park bomber and many other dangerous people. Prisoners are kept in solitary confinement and there is no human contact, so nobody can go to the prison and visit them. The prison has been described as hell on earth and the inmates are only allowed up to one hour outside of their cells, but this “outside” is in a more open cell, but a cell nevertheless.

There is a town in Russia named Mezhgorye. It is closed town and it is believed the people there are working on highly secretive Mount Yamantaw. The town didn’t exist before 1979. Mount Yamantaw is the highest mountain in the southern Urals. The United States believes it is some sort of nuclear base or shelter or even both. US spy satellites have taken pictures of large construction projects going on in that area. It has been reported two garrisons of soldiers were placed there. The Russians have their own story about this area and have given different answers at different times. They have said it was a mining site, a food storage area, a place where they were keeping Russian treasures so they wouldn’t get destroyed and a bunker to protect people from nuclear war. If it is a bunker we shouldn’t get on our high horse, because of the fact we have been constructing these things nonstop, underground for many years.

One place we have all heard about many times is area 51. For many years the United States government wouldn’t admit it existed, but now everyone knows. What they don’t know is what really goes on there. The government has been expanding the size of area 51 to prevent people from being able to spy into it. Previously it was possible to go on top of some of the closer hills with a telescope, but that has all changed as the borders were extended outward. Many people believe UFOs are being reverse engineered at Area 51 and some others believe there are aliens living on the base. It has been said there has been much construction going on under the base to hide what was really going on from the eyes of spying satellites. The area above the base is a no-fly zone. Signs around the perimeter of the base warn trespasses deadly force can be used by the government.

One place most of us will never get to see is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. It was established with the purpose of protecting seeds of various plants in case of a catastrophe which wiped out our crops. The vault is located about 395 feet inside of a sandstone mountain. The mountain is on the island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard. It was opened in 2008 and there are over 250 million crop seeds from around the world packed into packages and heat sealed to guard against moisture. This island was picked for the vault, because it has no tectonic activity, boasts preservation boosting permafrost and is almost 428 feet above sea level. Only dedicated researchers and plant breeders are allowed inside the vault.

There is a temple located in the region of Shinto. It is not open to the public and the only person allowed in the temple is a priest who belongs to the Imperial family. Every 20 years this temple is destroyed and rebuilt to symbolize the cycle of life and death.

Room 39 inside the Ruling Worker’s Party Building in Pyongyang is a place no outsider will ever see. It is top secret, but there have been many guesses by the West of what really goes on there and this is what we think, we believe one of the main activities there is counterfeiting US $100 bills, making illegal drugs and committing international insurance fraud. It is said these activities bring in between one half to one  billion a year and help fund North Korea’s missile program.

Another very secret place is a group of caves in France known as the Lascaux Caves. If you are wondering why caves would be secret the answer to this question is an easy one. The caves are very delicate and contain ancient drawings and the country of France is trying to preserve them, so they only let a few very important scientists go into the caves.

So far I have talked about places which most of us would not be allowed to travel to, but there are places you can’t even Google clearly. Google has placed a blur over some of them. The question is will they reverse this policy anytime soon? Perhaps by the time this article is published you will be able to see some of the sites, but I doubt it. One of these places is the Keowee Dam, in South Carolina. It’s a man-made reservoir on Lake Keowee. It may be blurred, because it is believed the dam helps run the Oconee Nuclear Station. It does make one wonder what would stop anyone from just taking a photo of it. Another place which has received a generous amount of Google pixilation is the Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands. It is easy to figure this one out since it is said there are US nuclear bombs stored in bunkers on the base.

So we can see there are at least several different kinds of secrecy and now we realize this also includes computer secrecy. We might not have realized this at the beginning of this article. We can also see there are many different reasons for keeping a place secret. One reason may be religious, another defense and still another preservation of something precious. I’m sure there are other reasons I haven’t even thought about.