When people think of treasure they normally imagine a chest of gold within a shipwreck or a long lost ancient artifact worth millions, and this is exactly the reason that there’s so many successful minor treasure hunters out there.
They look in the places people don’t think of for the things people don’t consider treasure. Someone who metal detects battles sites will find much more wealth than someone who goes after a famous treasure, purely because the chances of finding such as thing are near impossible. But every now and again there’s hidden treasures that people know of that are simply to dangerous to get to, so here’s 5 of them.
1) Zone Rouge
This is an area in France that starts just above Verdun, travels west towards Amiens and then north to Lille. During the first world war millions of tons of bombs and rockets were fired from either side, as well as countless chemical gas attacks. The area affected by this non stop bombardment is known as zone rouge, a red zone that contains so many bodies and left over weaponry that the public is banned from going there.
The area has become smaller over the years as clearance teams remove dangerous items from the area, and the mustard gas dissipates out of the soil and water supplies, but it will be decades before its completely safe again.
As for the treasure, it lays within the buried trench sections in the form of medals and other war artifacts. When the shelling crushed a section of trench it would bury whoever was unlucky enough to be there, and during the fighting it wasn’t a priority to dig out buried men. Most of the time the bodies were simply left there, as even today hundreds of lost soldiers from the first world war are found and re-buried.
Most common WW1 medals start at a few hundred, but the rarer ones can go for thousands. The potential of great wealth comes from the shear number of soldiers that were stationed along zone rouge, as thousand of soldiers were buried in the fighting and to this day remain there, along with whatever they had on them. Just don’t go digging around there as apart from being incredibly disrespectful, its closed off for a reason and smashing a shovel into the ground could see you stabbing a left over canister of mustard gas or an old mortar round.
2) Northern Canada’s Gold
Gold is found in every single country on earth, and is much more common than people think. The only problem is that when people find some, its normally in tiny flour sized specks and takes a huge operation to recover an amount worth having.
The Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon are the 3 most unexplored first world areas, with the region known to be rich in gold but due to its size, no one can find it easily. When people first explore regions no one has been to before, gold can be found much more easily as there hasn’t been anyone to find and remove the surface gold yet, leading to much bigger nuggets than panning can provide.
The danger of this one is that the region is very sparsely populated due to the lack of decent growing ground and freezing temperatures. If you look at a satellite map of those 2 regions you’ll see its scattered in lakes and hard rock, by far the best places to look for gold, but simply going there would take a huge and very well stocked expedition. The area is so remote that special vehicles, clothing and tools would all have to be brought in at great cost, and all for the “chance” of gold.
This is the reason that major gold mining companies have avoided the area, as its simply too expensive to scan the area for a deposit worthy of the cost of setting up a mining operation. There could be many lakes on the bedrock packed with gold, but unless you are a survival expert and have experience diving in freezing temperatures, you’ll probably want to give this one a miss.
3) The First Qin Emperor’s tomb
The Qin dynasty was an enormous empire that ruled over most of modern day china during the 3rd century BC. Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the first ruler to conquer 6 warring states and unify the country, and because of this he was immensely rich.
His tomb took 38 years to build and holds the world famous terracotta army who were intended to be his personal guard during the after life. The tomb is enormous and stretches out over several miles, containing sections to hold the different things he’d need after death, such as art and weapon rooms.
His tomb is one of the few places in the complex that has yet to be explored, even though its location is well known. One thing the emperor made sure of before his death was that his body would not be disturbed, and so placed a series of traps and obstacles to make sure anyone who got inside his burial chamber wouldn’t get back out again.
The most famous of these traps is said to be a river of mercury around the edges of the room he’s in, as well as trip wire crossbows and a few other nasty things. Anything that contains a tension powered device like a bow or some kind of poison would have certainly rotten and dissolved into nothing by now, but the mercury is a different story.
The room is believed to be air tight as scans have detected ground water not being able to enter the room, and a very dense substance has been detected within the room itself, giving credit to the mercury claim. Its also the kind of crazy thing people who had this level of power would do, and after so long it could have pressurised slightly, greeting whoever opens the entrance door to a huge cloud of toxic gas.
4) Iowa Jima
This island in the pacific has been featured within many films about the second world war and was one of the fiercest battles during the whole conflict. The island itself is quite small but the Japanese fortified it with hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels and chambers.
When America attacked they shelled it for days with ship mounted artillery, leading to many of the tunnels collapsing. When the Japanese realised they were going to lose the island they blew up many of the rooms to stop the Americans getting any supplies they had left, along with placing many traps designed to trigger when someone ventured down them.
Today the collapsed tunnels are closed off due to the safety risks, but are known to contain the bodies of several hundred Japanese soldiers, along with everything they had on them. The treasure part would be in the form of Samurai swords the officers carried, as most of these swords would have been taken by force and awarded to the bravest officers. The higher the rank the greater the chance of finding an ancient sword, some of which can be worth millions.
Medals and other artifacts would also reach a pretty penny, but the tunnels have been closed off for good reason. Even if all the traps set have rusted into nothing, the tunnels are less than stable and would require a full scale digging operation from the surface to access safely.
5) Siberian Gold
This is the same principle as northern Canada’s gold, except being considerably bigger and with more bears. The area is so sparsely populated that you can walk for days without seeing signs of human life, and is simply to expensive to prospect for gold.
When gold has been found in Siberia its normally in pretty large quantities, as non of the previous inhabitants of the region bothered to hunt it out and make use of it, mostly due to how difficult it is to survive there. Since the area is so big there’s probably more unfound gold there than anywhere else on earth, but simply moving across the region is a real challenge.
This is the kind of place you can check a hundred lakes and find nothing, or check the right lake and become rich over night. The problem is finding the right lake in a such a vast country before you end up freezing to death.
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