Dwain Walden is editor and publisher of The Moultrie Observer.

Ever heard that expression, “It’s not exactly rocket science?”

Well, maybe some things are more complex than we think. Or at least evidence points in that direction.

This past week a video on national news showed a man walking up to the opened rear of a parked armored vehicle. He picked up a bucket containing $1 million in gold and just walk off down the street. The video I saw didn’t show any security guards close by.

Now in the movies it takes all sorts of explosives, assault weapons and perhaps even military types of hardware to pull these events off. Typically there’s a firefight with guards and police. Lots of planning and perhaps even some dry runs are required.

I can just imagine that this yahoo was walking down the street, perhaps whistling the theme to “The Andy Griffith Show” and wondering how he would make the payment on his new bass boat. And there it was… a bucket full of gold sitting in the back of an open armored vehicle. “Yes, I’ll have some.”

Of course he wasn’t wearing a mask and his close-up photo caught on a surveillance camera may mean that his quick action may also mean a quick arrest.

Such carelessness on the part of the armored car company might initially seem like a rarity. Au contraire.

I Googled such events and just this past year there were reports from Tennessee, Rhode Island and New Jersey where money fell out of the back of armored vehicles, scattering cash all over the streets and in some instances causing chaos.

As well, I recall other such mishaps in previous years.

Okay, here’s a vehicle with bullet proof glass made from metal that can take a heavy blast from most conventional weapons, and yet someone forgot to lock the back door.

I would think that one case like this many years ago would be the very baseline or poster child for training those who operate these vehicles.

“Hey Fred, did you lock the back door?”

“Well I think I did.”

“Well Fred why don’t you go shake it, and let’s make sure!”

Maybe there is something about locking an armored car back door that I don’t know about. But then I’m no expert on armored cars — just what I see in the movies. Yet I doubt those who operate them were candidates for NASA, so it would not seem a major undertaking.

It could be these guys missed class the day they covered “locking the back door.”

Even if the door flung open, it would seem that bags of money would be secured in an internal container of some kind that would prevent it from flying out on the turnpike.

Again, I’m no security expert, but I do have some experience in protecting cash.

During my college days, one of my jobs was running a gas station on the night shift. When I closed in the wee hours, I took the cash bag and put it in a six-inch pipe that stuck out of the concrete flooring in a back room. The cap on the pipe was screwed down with a very large Ninja-class wrench that was then hidden in another room.

Crates were then piled on top of the pipe that held the cash. A few dollars were left in the tiny safe in the front office, and the door to the safe was left open. Like I said, it wasn’t rocket science but it worked … at least as long as I worked there.

So now every time I see an armored car, I’m wondering what the odds are that the back door is unlocked. And probably you will too now that we have discussed this phenomenon.