Topic: Keeping or recovering seed phrases during or after a natural disaster. (Read 675 times)

Dude will you trust a third party agent like Google with the security of your funds? Even the mighty Google could be hacked. 2018, Google had security bridge and over 5000 users private data were compromised^[1]. Please never save your seed phrase or private keys in your Gmail account, cloud services, mobile or computer connected to the internet.

[1]. Google security breach

Memorizing the seed phrase is a bad practice and should be avoided at all cost. Even if the person has a good memory, there's still some chances that they person might forgot. Also, we live in a world of uncertainty, the person might be involved in an accident and suffer loss of memory.

It should be in a place where it would be safe from anything; hacker's and stealing. If it is with natural disasters be sure to keep your device with you. But in worse instances like earthquake and Flood, this would be tough. You may indeed consider memorizing your private keys but you have to be sure you will never forget any of it. This is I guess one of the downsides for this industry unlike with banks wherein you could just contact it once situation becomes better after a disaster. in this industry you are the only one in charge for your funds which is why you need to take extra caution with your safekeep and overall actions toward it.Strategies of such could work but yes, the more you make it complicated the more you’d struggle to access your safekeep once you needed it. And with the situation as the main subject, manage the risk of both accessing it in times of need and putting it away from risk of being accessed by other people.

These disasters are alarming. Conspiracy theorists are up to make several stories about it. It's very believable especially when Oprah hired his own firefighters before the fire started. 

We'd likely have a safer seed if we do it this way. Sort of a redundant way but keep the paper in a tight container, no water can get in.
I live in the lower area where food could strike any moment actually so I shared my seed with my sister who lives on top of the mountain. I just hope she won't spend it all or lose the seed she kept for me. If I die from any disaster, it's hers.

Depends on how you store them. You can't really lose it if you store it carefully. If you write it on a piece of paper and store it at your house, yes there is a good chance that you could lose it with a natural disaster, like floods would take it away and you will never have access to it.

But, if you could end up putting it in a few different places, far apart from each other, that would be a lot better for you without a doubt. I get that it is not going to be something that would be easy to handle, but you just have to handle it a bit differently. I get that it is going to be something that we can care on the long run, hopefully it will be doing something that would make sense if you could do it that way.

I think that you mainly need to be prepared for the type of natural disaster you may expect and it also depends on your house, I try to explain myself better: if you live in Florida there is a way bigger probability of hurricanes rather than fire or earthquake but if you live in California is exactly the opposite so in one case you may place your seed into something that is almost impossible to move, on the other into something fireproof for example. Also if you have your own detached house, even if it gets burned to the ground or destroyed, probably it's easier to find your seed compared to the same scenario but while living in big apartment buildings.

I know there are several websites that sell stainless still plaques where you can write your seed on, those are also fireproof, that's a good solution in many cases.

That's right, there is no perfect way and we also cannot fight disasters and we also hope that it doesn't happen because disasters will harm everyone and will also cause loss of property and objects including banks and whatever.
And I'm sure we all have different choices and plans in dealing with all of this because there are many ways for each person to be sure of their own path and know the situation in the location where they live.
And the best thing is, keep it as safe as possible in your own way to secure the recovery phrase because you alone know the circumstances and situation.

Indeed, there is no perfect method to ensure the absolute safety of our assets, and what we can do is choose the method that we feel is the safest for us. And how long we can keep and protect it cannot be predicted because that also belongs to the future and the future is unpredictable.

Exactly, each person's situation is different, so it is impossible to say that the method that works for them will also work for us. That's why I don't imitate anyone but just choose what I feel is safe for me. Luckily so far I'm fine with my method.

There is not really a perfect method to store our coins, as every single method that we may think of is going to have several weaknesses, what we must do is that according to the scenarios we think we may have to face we can take the best possible solution we may have available.

And since our circumstances are different then this means that what it works for you may not work for me, but that is to be expected and if anything we may have to come up with a personalized solution if the place where we live has a significant number of challenges we need to overcome.

Natural disasters will definitely happen and this is what we have to think about, how to store recovery phrases very safely from any disaster.
And people have found creative ways to do this. Paper is great but it is susceptible to damage especially from floods and fires, so think of stronger physical methods such as engraving on stone or metal and placing it in a safe place that only we know about.
And make as many copies of the recovery phrase as possible and store them in different safe places and in different ways to be safe from whatever happens, even safer, if we are still alive and intact. By making a small tattoo on a hidden part of the body with carvings that other people cannot understand when seen, could be a good choice.

Typhoons strike my country almost every year. As a result, we anticipate a massive flood anywhere in the country to the area affected by the typhoon. In this case, the typhoon will not hit the country right away; instead, government officials and weather forecasters urge us to be cautious of flooding and to seek refuge at an evacuation center. So, now that we are aware of this, the first thing to consider is to keep the the most important item in mind. And I'm confident you'll never forget the seed phrase or private key.

Since I've been exposed by these natural disasters, I believe it's always advisable to retain seed phrases and private keys physically. It all depends on how you handle it.

When we cannot prevent or prevent a natural calamity from happening, Why can't someone have a different approach to safeguard his or her seed phrase in this manner? You begin by setting up a brand-new, personal Gmail account. You won't share your Gmail account with anyone or use it to register for any online services. You will start by sending your seed phrase to the newly formed Gmail account. Remove the Gmail login from your phone or laptop after that, but make sure you can still remember and not forget your login password and your Gmail account name. Only when you need to access your seed phrase is when you log into your Gmail account. You won't ever log into the newly formed Gmail account aside from that.

If any natural disasters occur, this approach of sending your seed phrase to your freshly formed Gmail can be helpful because you can still retrieve your seed phrase by signing into Gmail and looking through the received email.

I don't agree with storing seed phrase on cloud storage either this is because as you said it prone to attacks from hackers and storing such informations online is also risky since you may not know who is monitoring your online activities and having access to informations that you store online through you device,  so the risk associated with storing your seed phrase online is double and high enough for everyone to look away from it a a decision for storing your wallet keys.

And just my opinion any ways,  writing them down and saving them in multiple locations can help the chances of easily accessing a duplicate copy if you lost any,  this method also has its own risks,  but at least of is better and less risky at some point.

No data is really safe cause even if you keep yourself secured from virtual calamities, you're not safe in any way whatsoever against natural ones. I say that the best thing you could really do for yourself if you want to reliably secure your funds through a self-custodial wallet is through purchasing dedicated cold wallets which are easier to carry with, meaning you can tote them wherever you go whenever you want to. Of course you still run the risk of losing it to a pickpocket, or just random happenstance but then again, between not being able to access it anymore and being able to access it still through the help of online support or something I'd choose the latter.

Anyway, no data is safe, everything will be deleted eventually. We got the sun who's going to gobble the planet up in approximately 5 billion years from now to blame for that.

You should not store your seed phrase in any cloud service, this method isn't vulnerable to natural disasters, but it is prone to hacking because it is online. I don't recommend that people do this to mitigate the dangers of a natural disaster. I feel you're in more danger of losing your seed phrase if it is online, than you losing it through to an earthquake or flood. You'll probably be mad with yourself if you lose your seed phrase because it is online, than you would be if your seed phrase is on paper and you are affected by a natural disaster, but you save your life and lose your money.

I'm not affiliated with the company, but one way is to use something like stamp seed, where you stamp your seed phrase on a titanium plate that you store in a safe location.
This is a very long-term solution, but if you're not planning to move your coins until the price is over 100k, or whatever it is that you're aiming for, you can put your seed in a metal strongbox, so that it's easy to find with a metal detector and bury it in a hole, somewhere safe, like next to your house. The seed is going to survive a fire, flood, earthquake, bombing, even a nuclear detonation, as long as you're not in the epicenter (but if you are, money is the last thing you'll need).

I don't recommend storing seeds in many different locations because you'll never be able to monitor all of them. One day your money could disappear and you won't even know the point of failure.

I have been thinking about this exercise for a bit. The worst situation is me losing it physically or access like "hey the house you yous stashed in foreclosed" Encrypted file on a service seems like a great idea. These services do all the hard work for you, multiple redundant locations, back ups and I can log in anywhere and retrieve what I need seems to have more utility.

Encrypting your seed phrase and storing it in a cloud storage that you trust and you know isn't going anywhere very soon, like Google Drive, isn't really a bad idea considering it won't be vulnerable to getting lost forever due to natural disasters that you've mentioned because as you said, they don't come after a warning and even if you get a warning sometimes, you will still not be able to actually do something about your seed phrases that quick.

If you have them encrypted and stored somewhere safe online, you won't need to worry about them at all if, unfortunately, you had to go through something tragic like your house getting washed out by flood or earthquake hitting it really hard and the only thing that might survive is you.

Hardware wallets, notes written on paper, seeds stored in special safes at home. You can lose all this very quickly due to natural disasters. The only thing you can do is to increase the storage space. If you have houses in different cities or if your parents live there, you can store your seeds there or you can do the healthiest thing and rent physical safes in banks and distribute your seeds to your safes in banks in more than one city. I never thought i would use banks in this way for security reasons

But with the recent disasters we have experienced, we may think that the best thing would be to divide the seeds and distribute them to different places rather than storing them in one place. The safest method i can think of is to store the seeds in bank vaults in different cities and store them in more than one place rather than in one place.

As the OP also mentioned, storing seed phrases on a physical device also has risks, in a fire or flood you can find them again, but if it is a natural disaster or an earthquake that causes large landslides finding the safe is also extremely difficult. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, so depending on the geographical conditions where we live, we use the most suitable methods. Diversifying storage methods is also an effective measure. I still use the traditional way of writing them down in a notebook and I also share these secrets with my wife and she also has her own way of keeping them.

Even with your password you will forget how much more the seed phrase? One of the disadvantages is that if you are getting old you'll surely forget it. I've also read somewhere in the forum that he made a lyric of music of his seed phrase which is creative but if that was on paper it is still possible that it got destroyed unless you've engraved it into steel plate.

What is best is having a safe or vault in your house or having multiple of it where you store your seed phrase along with your essential documents that are safe from flood and fireproof. Only problem really is when it will be swept away by the flood which you can't track where it goes unless it has a tracker.

Even if you are good with remembering stuffs and your memory is shape it's still wouldn't be advisable to actually save your seed phrase up in your memory as it's unethical to do so because as others have clearly pointed out we most surely forget because you are human so rather than memorising your phrase better just to put down in writing or buy some seed phrase saving device like the metal seed phrase storer which can survive so many wether and conditions.

If it's seed phrase then I think it's possible to even make it more secured if the seed phrase is divided like half of of the words is encrypted and the other is also encrypted then store it in cloud therefore even if they did get past the encryption but they wouldn't still be able to access the wallet without out the rest of the seed phrase. Other than that is having backup in multiple locations just like the others explaination about having backup in more than one place.

This is why I memorized my seed, even though it's the most unreliable storage method, but it's always with me. For long term I rely on paper backups and USB sticks, but for the short term risk of all backups being lost I have my memory. This is far from ideal but a lot better than nothing.

I remember someone said that through the forum and that's his only way of keeping his seed phrases. I just hope that it was just a joke or if it's real, the amount wasn't that much. I'll never do this, my memory isn't as great as when I was younger and we're all growing old. You'll never know if your mind is still sharp the next day whether you're healthy living or not, there will be a point in our lives that our minds won't be sharp anymore. And that's true about you'll never know what may happen the next day if you'll stumble upon a wall that will hit your head unknowingly. It's just hard to do this and even I've got the best memory shape, I'll not trust that fact because as we age, there are functions that won't be perfect as they used to be.

I have some suggestions to improve this idea a little bit.
telling someone about your bitcoin will be important and "riskier" because if the owner died in that natural event who will recover the coins?
here one backup will be at other country/state/city but what about other 3 backups they are kept in one city(what if natural disaster destroyed that city where the three backups are?)
//like your bank locker will be in your city,
//your metal plate will be in your city(which don't have risk of being destroyed but have risk of being stolen or lost)
//if your passwords for cloud account are written on paper and kept at your home(which is in your city)

This is certainly something that was beyond all of our expectations and no one expected such a natural disaster to occur. However, this always happens suddenly. Be grateful if this happened after there was prior warning from the authorities regarding the disaster. So we can still save our assets. However, if this happens suddenly and we cannot save our assets, then we must be prepared for the consequences. In this case, regarding seed phrases or other important information and data regarding crypto assets, everything will have risks. Personally, I have several offline and online backups. Of course, going online will be very dangerous because it is vulnerable to cyber crime. Therefore I chose it for few assets. Meanwhile for offline ones, I will pay more attention to storage locations that can be carried easily and are always close to us

My plan is to do things the way i've always done, either write my seed phrase on paper or engrave it on steel and provide multiple backups in more than one location, i am not using the cloud, any online service or anything that is not recommended to mitigate the possibility of a natural disaster. Too many of these solutions only provide a false sense of security and you're increasing your chances of losing your BTC's before you're ever affected by a natural disaster.
Do not ever memorize your seed phrase, doing so puts you in more danger of losing your funds than natural disasters. Too many people also get head or brain injury, stroke and other illness that can make them lose their memory.

Private key could be;

256 character long binary code
64 digit hexadecimal code
QR code
Mnemonic phrase

but most like we would really be having playing that common 64-character and its not something so simple that could really be that
easily memorize.Yes, its possible but chance or risks on forgetting those characters in due time is high and we know that one false character would really be entirely mess up your funds
since wallet cant really accessed anymore.This is why it would really be that preferred for those keys to be stored up into those traditional or common way
despite on having that risks on natural disasters and other possible factors. Even myself would definitely be stacking it up through those ways and methods and the only
last option would be those memorizing but i dont see for me on doing it.

The only solution is memorization of the seed phrase, which is quite hard, or writing your seed phrase on multiple pieces of paper and saving it in multiple places. So even if you destroy one, you can recover it through another seed phrase. But the condition is that the places should be super secure; otherwise, risk is still involved. I think the second option would be easier for us. We have to identify the super-secure places and take steps before any incidents happen. 

To be honest, I don't have a clear idea of how to secure or recover seed phrases in the event of a major disaster affecting a country. Perhaps the best approach is to either memorize your seed phrase or store it in multiple geographically separate locations, such as different cities. That way if a disaster happens on one city, the seed phrase stored in another city would remain unaffected giving you at least one additional copy.

This is the idea that comes to mind at the moment,but I'm interested in reading more of the replies here to see if there are better solutions available.

Saving our seed phrases even though it is encrypted is also prone to hacking.  I believe there are procedures in saving our seed phrases resistant to natural disasters, such as putting the file in a case that is both water, fire-resistant, and rust-resistant and then borrowing it underground.  It is a simple process but very effective in preventing natural disaster from destroying the item where our seed phrases is stored.

Interesting idea but it depends on the location because in neighborhood with high crime rate, your chances of losing your seed phrase to thief or criminal is very high compared to a natural disaster. Moving around a lot with the seed phrase increases the chances of losing the seed phrase.

Well, there is no one-size-fits-all solution so just being proactive might be the best approach to situations like that if they occur in the future.

Storing one’s seed phrase in the cloud or any online computer is not safe. The internet is a vulnerable place and almost everything online can be compromised. The risk of storing one’s seed phrase online is too great. I think the best option in this case is to have multiple locations (if possible different cities) where you hide the metal with your engraved seed phrase.

Backing it up would be the solution. I have a multiple backup of my seed phrase that only I myself know. Storing it in different location is a necessary thing to do. One example on where you can store it is on a safe, accessible and has a person that currently guarding the place like your parents house. It is a way to have a back up seed phrase incase a natural disaster happen in the place where you store your seed phrase.

We also need to get ready in case there's another disaster like being a victim of an accident or being diseased. Putting instructions on how to use your wallet on your safe place would be ideal. I personally store this kind of instruction on places that can be retrieved if I'm not in this world anymore. Putting extra security like hiding your seed phrase somewhere separate in the house and giving clue to the instructions on how to find it would be fun, it's like a hide and seek.

Well, I understand your concern regarding the safety of your seed phrase due to natural disasters, but honestly, supposing that a fire similar to the one in Lahaina occurred, the seed phrase wouldn't be the first to think of saving your life. In my opinion, in such extreme disasters, there are limited options in terms of what you can do to save a seed phrase that has been physically stored. Piece of paper? What are you going to find if your house has burned, collapsed, or been swept away by a flood? Probably nothing. The only thing that would still be standing is storing it online, but such an option poses other risks.

We are all living with risks every day, if I am living in a country with such natural disasters,  I would worry about my safety first, I would probably end up leaving that country and travel to another country for a peaceful living, but nothing is guaranteed, not all crypto investors will become rich and not all investors will even see the year 2025, everyday people are dying, we just don't know when our time will be up.

The only options left for people living g in such country that couldn't afford moving out of the country is to think more about their safety first and create backup of their crypto wallet in different manners, if not for hacks affecting online cloud storages, it would have been a perfect way in this kind of situations.

Write down your recovery seed on a piece of iron or steel, also get a hardware wallet, how you are going to keep this near you when a natural disaster is unfolding is on you to figure out.

You are right, the risk is higher in storing them at Online cloud services, but I am talking about AWS storage systems, they have challenged people to hack them in return of hell a lot of money and till now they have not been hacked, maybe once but the data was never gone (means not all data were hacked as it needed more time which Hackers lacks). We can follow some instructions or methods to encrypt our seed phrases and we can then store it on the Online cloud services.

By encrypting the seed phrase with our own keys, we can store it safely on AWS storage solutions, The Point I'm trying to make here is, that we can trust AWS products or Azure services, I even read on Azure's WP that, they will never share any of your information stored in there products with the governments, Until you gave them the permission. I know many people say, they will still share the information behind your back but till now, I am not able to find a single case like that.

PS: BTW what are your plans?

That's true, we have the abundance of these things archived in history records and monuments andyet I don't know how this things were always preserved against any natural disaster, let's take for instance maybe where these things are situated are not prone to natural disasters unlike where some people lived at and can easily get encroached by any ofbthese pandemics, yet i understand that some natural disasters are very large that such could affect a whole region in a country but yet there's always a way of rediscovering of these items after the incident, this call for us having a back up as a second alternative to our private keys whenever the worst should happen.

The best strategy remains that which is according to Bitcoin principles, and that is never to store values or large amount of money in one place or in centralized manner. Create duplicates and store them in locations that are less likely to experience flood-like disasters at once. You could write the seed phrase on multiple corrosion-proof metals and bury them underground in the multiple locations. If flood like disaster washes away a metal in one location other metals in other locations should remain safe. . And you can always replace the one that has been washed off immediately after the disaster.

This is not a recommended solution, do not store your seed phrase on any cloud service or online, like i have said, if you store your seed in that way, the risk of it getting hacked and stolen by an attacker is higher than you being affected by an earthquake or a flood.
This 'solution' means you will be moving everywhere with your seed phrase, what if you get robbed and your 'necklace' is stolen, only for the thief to find out that your seed phrase was somehow written on it. Some of these solutions are not recommended and too risky, if you implement them you may lose your seed phrase and never be affected by a natural disaster.

Even if you'll store it on cloud encrypted, that's still not a choice for me. The key here is to have multiple back ups, whether they're fire proof, water proof and something that you can bring wherever you are as much as handy as it is. I think in that case, a very handy accessory where you can store your keys without knowing other people that it is a seed phrase of yours. You'll have to make it look stylish that it won't be getting that much attention in the public but you know what it is and can bring it anywhere since you've got one somewhere in your house. I guess all of us have their own ways of keeping it but great that you've mentioned that ones that should be slash for one's choice.

So far,i didnt luckily experience these unfortunate stuffs when it comes to natural disaster on which the fact i did have those assumptions on the time that i do stored up my keys on a flash drive which i do think about that sudden house fire which would really be completely that be burning on everything into ashes this is why i have decided on having that 3 copies on which one is kept on the house, one is kept in the car and one is kept in my own sling bag on which i do bring out most of the time. All of these things would really be at huge risks on the time that natural disaster would really happen on which it do makes you unprepared and this is why some people would really be considering on having those cloud storages or saving it up online just to remove that kind of probability even though its risky but it is really that somewhat safer when stored in the cloud
but we arent that dumb not to know on whats the cons on using up cloud storage which it would really be that prone to hackers and possible exploits on which it would really be causing out that kind of breach.

One more option that hasn't been mentioned yet.

One could encrypt their SEED phrase and (using an OP_RETURN script) include it in their transaction  The SEED kept on blockchain is guaranteed to survive any natural disaster, no matter how severe it is.

The encryption can be done with the assistance of physical security token that can be carried at any time and any moment including the natural disaster time.

During a natural disaster, the banks are not safe either. Flooding could have the building submerged and the notes where the seed phrase is written could be torn off, also if it is earthquake, the piece of paper may not survive it but the metallic steel plate could but still be part of the rubbles.

Never you store your seed phrase on Google drive, a computer or phone connected to the internet.

This is actually an unexpected reply but it makes a lot of sense. One could stuff one in his wallet and carry it everywhere he goes but the only drawback is that one could be rubbed or lost the wallet and if it gets into the hands of a crypto thief we know what will happen. I also think it would be wise to omit and memorize one or two of the words.

My point is that securing your phrase with friends and family is a huge risk, huge.  Sure keep it somewhere, but only the owner (you) knows, don't make it desirable by talking about.  Just recently a crypto mogul got dismembered, I got a feeling someone was looking for something no?  It's not just physical security but how you manage yourself. Don't make yourself a mark no matter how you choose to store your seed.

I think you have taken the wrong meaning of the OP's post, he is concerned about natural disasters that could lead to the destruction of seed phrases saved in physical form. And you are talking about relationships. I understood your Point of view but that's not what we are talking about here. Because that's another discussion to talk about. And the answer to that discussion is so simple which is to never trust anybody else with your private keys or seed phrase. Just trust yourselves.

You have taken the discussion to another level, Like why did you bring up the affair of a wife with a friend who wanted to go for a trip using the money that (someone) has shared the Key with you?  That seems a little bit confusing. But, ignoring it and coming to the main query.

I can say, we should prefer to save the seed phrase in some form of necklace and or in any type of form that remains near to us, like a necklace or a band. And that band or necklace should be waterproof. Because in the fire of Hawaii, people jump into the sea to save their lives. So, if unfortunately, someone got stuck in such situation then he/she could save their life by jumping into the see.

You have started an interesting topic, and it's the humble heart of you, that you think of it as it represents in the post. Because most people like me, ignore the idea of thinking about a solution to do something about saving seed phrases in physical form. Because, we think, we are safe and nothing to be worried about now. But yeah, who knows what might come to you. Or, we don't save seed phrases in physical form instead we save them in online form or on devices, and that's why we don't care about such disasters.

The best solution that came to my mind is, that we can use AWS storage services to store the seed phrase, I know those services will cost us but, still, the security levels and durability levels are so high in there.

You almost shared every topic related to saving the seed phrase in secure physical form but as the OP said, what if the fire got you then most of the solutions have used the metal components. Then that metal component might melt down and the overall seed phrase written on it will be gone too. We have to think of a metal that is melt-proof.

Of course, my dear we're talking about safeguarding seed phrase here, If it's about safeguarding our lives I have a whole day telling you what precautionary measures we are taking, I never mentioned banks here it is about places I'm good on it you have your ways and means and I have mine so we'll keep it what best for our seed phrase.

Thank you dear for asking about safeguarding our lives I hope you will too, disasters can really happen when you least expect it.

Well dear, if there are so many natural disasters in your country, have you taken steps to safe guard your life first ? You can store your seed phrases to multiple places, but if there is no life then there is no use of all these phrases and money. I hope people give same attention to their lives as well.

Keeping seed phrases at many places may give you redundancy but at the same time, it gives more exposure to your seed phrase. For example, if you store it in bank , give it to some trustworthy person to store at another location and your home. Now if the bank gets robbed, or your relatives misuses the phrases then ?

We can also consider storing them in keychain USB sticks which is not a recommended procedure but it what the best possible way to have access keys in a few seconds of the time frame. We already have USB sticks smaller than 1 inch on Amazon and also something in form of jewelry which is waterproof so we can wear it with us always so we don't even need to look for the keys at that emergency situation just focus on saving the lives first.

But this is not as secure so we can allocate some emergency savings if someone is from the geolocation where natural calamities may occur at any time and save the life savings in the most secure ways like air-gapped/cold storage.

It's a big concern if you only have one copy of your seed phrase, Our country has a lot of disasters, we have typhoons, floods, fires, and earthquakes and we have in our location what our experts call the Big One which happens every 100 years and it could happen anytime.

So I'm preparing for this I have three copies of my seed phrase stored on our farms and our ancestral home It is well kept and it's coded in case there is intrusion he'll have a hard time figuring it all out, having two or three secured and well-kept copies in different places is important you just never know when calamities and disaster happens.

Everything has a risk, saving a seed phrase has a risk of losing access to your wallet, while saving in online or centralized exchange has a risk of bankrupt or compromised, so pick which risk you able to deal with it.

Of course saving oneself is the most important thing, but the current generations are don't care about other people even their own family, they can backstabbed someone who close with them in order to get money.

There are so many things in human history that have been preserved for years, in fact thousands of years and they are still there, it's not that you need a museum to take care of your things: sentimental value, art, jewelry...ah, yes, the private keys or phrases, etc.

In the distant past, based on the existing technology of each era it could be done, because it cannot be done today with so many technologies available, hardware and software provide the best way to protect things better than at any time in history, Just a little information and common sense.

There are very detailed compendiums of how you can protect a phrase or seed, that is "the fishing rod", it is up to each person to adapt it.

First of all, sorry to hear about that disaster. Yes, it could be life-taking events so at the time we can not think about anything but just to save ourselves and our loved ones. These are the times when nothing matters, neither our bank accounts, jobs, important documents in the house or secret keys in case of crypto. We would just run away from the life-threatening boundary to the safe zone.

So I think having keys stored in the private space online can be a good idea. I am talking about more secure like AWS or Google One space. Off course only a few private companies can be trusted when storing the data online. I think having a deep hidden folder in let us say iCloud, Google one or AWS servers can be a great escape.

This is the very reason big companies have two servers one the running server and the second the disaster management server. We can have one too with private subscribed spaces like the ones mentioned above to keep the data very safe.

The biggest security is keeping your mouth shut and not becoming a target. The larger amount the bigger the target followed by the company you keep. If you have a good amount of money have multiple hardware wallet of different architecture in different places. Maybe even have a sacrificial one to be found.

I'm 52yo and have seen a lot of shady stuff go down. Best friends and family smell money (blood in the water) will screw you over in a jiffy.

Things seem great until you find out your wife is screwing your best friend you trusted with something such a seed phrase and cleans you out for a European vacations with your wife.

I guess my point is, however you do it is up to you and security risk you can tolerate. My biggest risk is losing the phrase, I don't enough money to be very interesting or would be terrible loss. I hope to have that problem someday

In an environment where everything online is at risk, people generally think that physically storing passwords is safe. But as you said, many disasters can happen and we may lose our passwords.

Here are some of the ideas that came to my mind for this.
- After writing down our passwords somewhere, we can give them to someone we trust in another city or to someone who is not very familiar with the internet for safekeeping. For example, to an elderly relative.
- We can keep our passwords in a small safe.

After taking all the precautions, sometimes it is necessary to let things go.

These natural disasters and artificial humanitarian crises such as wars will give companies like Ledger Recover more demand. As I said in the past, this service will find demand due to either people’s lack of interest in being your own bank or their lack of trust and fear of losing the private key.
I do not recommend this service or any similar service here, but the risk assessment strategy requires you to be prepared if anything happens.

I made this topic when 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake happen Is Metal Seed Storage Safe in an Earthquake?

Don't do this, it is totally unrecommended no matter where you are living and all you get by doing this is a false sense of security. This 'solution' of yours means you are going to carry your seed phrase anywhere you go with your phone, you are closer to losing your phone, your seed phrase and funds in this way faster than you are ever going to be affected by a natural disaster.
A very bad advice, don't store your seed phrase online for any reason, anything stored online is prone to hacking and you will lose your funds even before an earthquake happens, that's if it ever affects you.

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I have read a lot of bad advises so far in this thread, too many of what a lot of you are recommending will make you lose your seed phrase faster than you'll ever be affected by a natural disaster. Take note that there is no security in obscurity and trying to go overboard to mitigate instances like natural disasters can make you lock yourself out of your funds, without ever being affected by one of those disasters. Just do it the traditional way, write your seed phrase down or engrave it in steel; make multiple backups of it in different locations, and if you are ever affected by a natural disaster, take it as life; if you survive a natural disaster, you may not be so sad that you lost money, but it'll be a sad event if you use unrecommended solutions to mitigate disasters, but lose your funds because of that without ever being affected by one.

Condolences to all the citizens of the country who have been mentioned who have experienced the disaster. Hopefully they will remain strong in accepting everything that has happened and can become food for thought for all behind the disaster that befell our brothers.
Natural disasters and other events that can result in damage to buildings and so on cannot be avoided. However, as humans we must protect and take good care of this nature.

For the time being, storing the seed phrase by making it in water-resistant and fire-resistant metal at least with the estimated time of arrival of the extinguishing unit is the best in my opinion. Of course, by estimating the storage location in a place that can be taken when the building collapses to the ground and is not carried away by large water currents.
If you store it in a place that has internet access, it is very risky.

This made me think for a while but for now my best solution is to engrave it on steel plate and store it in multiple locations like in your house and one on your parents house though it is still debatable that it could possibly get swept away by a flood or even the house got destroyed because of the wild fire. The best part is that you have 2 or 3 copies of it or others made song lyrics about its seed phrase, which is time-consuming but kind of encrypted with hidden meaning.

I am lucky that I am not in a flood-prone area and there are no wildfires here only earthquakes which I am still able to recover my seed phrase if ever my house gets broken as it will still stay where I've put it.

I will definitely take your second suggestion despite not following your first suggestion. I would definitely be much safer if I saved my seed phrase to Google Drive for safekeeping. Because the Gmail a person has is worth remembering that Gmail. As long as he remembers his Gmail password, he can save the recovery phase of the wallet.  If you save the seed phrase to Google Drive, it will never be deleted. Repaired my used phone a few days back then my phone completely refreshed and restarted. Although I lost all my documents, I was able to recover my wallet's seed phrase from Google Drive very easily. So to me, even if the unique system is less secure, storing the seed phrase in Google Drive seems much safer.

That's a valid concern, especially considering that as climate change progresses, there will be more natural disasters. Of course, it also depends on where you live and whether it's an area that's prone to natural disasters, but aside from natural disasters, there are also political instabilities that can have the same effect. For instance, I live in Ukraine, and while we don't have tsunamis or big earthquakes here, we frequently have fires and destruction of property due to missile and drone attacks by Russia, so the concerns about seed phrases are relevant as well, just as in case of natural disasters.
I'll admit that despite knowing that yeah, storing a seed phrase digitally is unsafe, that's what I do because I personally feel that the risk of getting hacked is lower for me than the risk of locking myself out of the wallet because of a physical seed phrase copy getting misplaced, lost, or destroyed.

I see only one possible solution, and that is that the backup simply has to be stored in different locations that are far enough from each other that they cannot be affected by the same natural disaster. However, it is not something that most people can afford because they simply do not have a location they trust, and therefore they have to be innovative and improvise.

In any case, being your own bank is a big risk and challenge, and there is no universal solution that could be called perfect. After all, in the situations mentioned by the OP, the primary thing is to save the life of yourself and your family, but also of other people - because what is the best backup worth if you lose your life or the life of someone who is of inestimable value to you?

Metal, but easily concealable, light, and easy to access, while at the same time not easy to detect as a seed phrase is my personal best-case scenario. I try to think like a refugee (with the understanding I've never been one) and try to think of scenarios we already know.

Long travel by foot over land and sea, fraught with personal risk, metal sheets and other valuables like rings are easily robbed (or in parts of the EU confiscated) so these make it extra vulnerable to risk (not just of exposure but loss). It'd have to be inscribed on tiny items concealed in clothes.

And, only because of that situation, committed to memory. I do note that memorising mnemonic phrases is not so difficult for me, but could pose a language difficulty for most people.

I wish mercy and acceptance to everyone who lost a life in these disasters, and I extend my condolences to their families and a speedy recovery to the injured.

You can solve this problem by using a multi-signature wallet. Approximately 2 out of 4 would be ideal, and you can do the following:

• Encrypt one of these private keys and place it in a secure cloud account, so that even if it is hacked, the hackers still need a second key.
• Store the second seeds in metal and keep them in a safe place in your home.
• Encrypt the third in the form of a hardware wallet and keep it in a secured bank vault somewhere else relatively far from your location.
• Encrypt the last key and keep it in another state or another country.

add more keys as needed, but keep all scenarios in mind and then start developing solutions using multi-signature wallets based on that.

When we look into the recent occurence of the natural pandemic we are having this days, storing our private keys could just be a little way needed more careful attention when we are saving them using a physical approach on materials to hide them where others cannot see, nature disaster will only render us no access to these keys from where we kept them if such should occur because we may not know when it could happen or how, neither are we aware of which one may occur in where we lived, the best thing to do is to always have a two different means of keeping the backup to our seeds.


If we are to broaden the means to how we can recover our seeds incase of any of these natural disasters, using mettalic sheath material like washers could have a long durability and can be indestructible, which means fire, water or wind can not destroy or displace this means, but am not sure of earthquake because these involved a massive opening of the land mass and the depth of the rubbles could be unpredicted by the scenario, yet having another alternative means to secure them is a good ideas.

Nothing that can be done rather than a saving it up at a different geographical location, when earthquakes or all this natural disasters happen even if a washer or any damage proof happens definitely they will be lost with them due to damage. So when storing large amounts of bitcoin look for three or more place at different cities if possible to store them. One thing again is to be careful of redundancy because ones it gets too much the seeds becomes vulnerable to been discovered. To reduce the risk again is to add passphrase which is probably known to only you such that when someone gets access to the seed phrases, without the passphrase they cannot have access to the funds on the wallet.


I like this multi sig idea but my concern is it will not be easily implemented for wallets that are used to store regular used coins. Anytime one needs to make use of the funds you need to reach out to Atleast one of these storage places. Regular asking about it makes it obvious. So I still go with the idea but store only funds in which you would be holding for a very long time there and then have an extra wallet for small holdings. This way you reach out to this locations on rare occasions.

Another thing is make sure the locations of those other seed phrases or keys should be at regions that are not prone to any of disasters.

In setting up the multi sig wallet you can follow the backup tips by Charles-Tim as they seem perfect to cases like this

What's the point? To recover an encrypted file, you need to have some sort of PGP private key. How are you going to back this up? You won't do it digitally, as it's a bad practice, and you will neither do it on paper, as that would be the equivalent of writing down a seed phrase in paper but with extra steps. And that's if we ignore the intermediary and the fact that if he disappears, you can't do anything.

If you're living in a country that currently experiences climate disasters, like fires and flooding, then I think your best course is to use metal and back it up on multiple places.

All above users doesn't read and understand what @OP is talking about, he already mentioned to save a seed phrase in fireproof or waterproof material, no need to mention it again.

Earthquake, tsunami, hurricane etc are really unexpected disaster, even you leave your steel plate in a safe place, there's a high chance you will not it in the same place because it's already moved to somewhere else.

To prevent this case, that's why I always bought my seed phrase wherever I go in an unexpected media e.g. concealing in a book

There are some countries you mentioned that are very likely to see natural disasters taking place over there, so if anyone who is living in such country is into crypto it's better to carve your recovery seed on a steal and keep it in a safe with key combination, not just anysafe, I mean the costly ones, if natural disaster happens you will be looking for the safe because of what was locked inside of it.

Also when such things unfold unexpectedly, the fastest thing that comes to mind is your smartphone, you can easily escape the menace with your pocket right next to you, so why is it wrong to keep your seed on your phone?

Before you get me wrong, I am not saying you should keep the keys in your phone, but you can also find a steel with an ATM card size shape and write the seed on it then keep that at the back of your phone, in between your phone pouch, I used to keep my ATM card in this location too, I am just giving this option to those living in countries with natural disasters, be prepared.

The most common damaging factors for your backups are water and fire because a most common type of backup is with Paper.

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You can use washers, metal as alternatives for piece of paper. Those storage types are better than paper against water, fire, acid and even shocks.

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Earthquake and other natural disasters are something natural that we can never escape when it comes, but we will do our best to secure our wallets in an expensive way so as to prevent the risk of losing your seed phrase online.

Banks are also affected in these countries that are affected with earthquakes so banks is not an option in this aspect because you might be delayed when you need them due to banks due process.

You can use some unique ways to safeguard you seed phrase; you can make reference to this thread created by Fillippone Securing your Seed Phrase with Washers

The unexpected nature of these events makes it hard to ensure the integrity of any tangible item, even fireproof and waterproof ones.

You could create a multisig wallet. This configuration requires numerous private keys to access monies. Divide a 2-of-3 multisig configuration and store one key at home, one in a bank safety deposit box in another city, and one with a trusted person in another region. A local natural calamity would not prevent you from using the remaining two keys. "Shamir's Secret Sharing" is another possibility. This breaks your seed into components, only a few needed to rebuild it. You can disperse or hide five portions if any three will regain your seed.

Both strategies are complicated, so study them before committing. However, they balance security and redundancy.

The solution imo is to store the seed phrases in different storages that have different survivability for different disasters, store your seed phrase in a bank that allows you to store other stuff besides money, they're a thing right? Or a safe that you can happily bury underground for a long time or you can just write it in a piece of paper and put that paper in your wallet which you keep on your person. Another unpopular way would be using Google Drive.

The increase in the rate of natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, wildfires, etc. has got me thinking of how safe my seed phrase is when I store it physically. The recent wildfire in the US nearly destroyed the entire town of Lahaina, Hawaii. The recent earthquake in Morocco almost wiped out the entire region of Marrakesh. In Libya, the flooding devastated the entire city of Derna.

I have learned in this forum that it is not safe to keep or save your seed phrase online, on the phone, or on the computer. We are also advised not to keep them with third parties because they can be stolen or accessed by anybody. Rather it is better to write them down and keep them in different safe locations. Another option is to write it on fireproof and waterproof material like steel and keep it safe.

My problem is that these natural disasters happen without warning signs. Recently we just woke up to see that our entire neighborhood has been flooded because of the collapse of a dam in the neighboring country. The earthquake in Turkey, Syria, and Morocco,  and the flood in Libya were impromptu and everyone was only concerned about saving lives and nobody cared about personal belongings like seed phrases. The destruction caused by these disasters is so widespread that it could destroy all the safe places where you safely kept your seed phrase. Recovering these seed phrases saved on disaster-proof materials after a natural disaster is somehow difficult because recovering them with machines like escalators and other earth-moving machines will be close to impossible. In the case of flooding, these materials would have been washed away into rivers or sea.  

I know that the security of our wallet is very important that is why it should be personal. I have heard of saving encrypted seed phrases in the cloud or online personal files. I know this is also risky but is there any means of saving my seed phrase safe from these natural disasters? That could atleast give a Bitcoiner access to a wallet after the loss of seed phrases during or after natural disasters.