Reading the thread Fire Safes with Electronic Locks got me thinking not about the locks but about what fire safe means. So I launched this thread to keep from hijacking chaosmagnet's thread.

A few years ago a friend's house burned to the ground. His 40-gun safe was in the center of the home. The home collapsed into the crawl space. Five days later the backhoe got to the safe. It was still hot to the touch.

Everyone was curious about how the contents fared. It took more than a few whacks with a splitting maul to get it open. Apparently it was a good secure design.

Turns out that a 12-hour safe will not protect the contents in this situation. Lack of oxygen kept everything from burning, but the contents were toast. The guns were charcoal, the coins lumps of gold, the light metal in the guns melted. The important documents and heirloom photos were dust.

My gun safe is now on an exterior wall to keep it from being in the middle of a house-sized oven.

The fire started from the fireplace igniting wood in the ceiling. My friend got up thinking he heard something. Smoke detector didn't go off. He saw the ceiling glowing between the tongue-and-groove joints. The family -- wife, 2 teenagers - got out with nothing but the main computer and the dog -- and they backed their vehicles out of the garage.