They read like descriptions of props from the script of a Hollywood heist caper, with promises to ward off “attacks” on all six sides from the usual suspects: hammer, crowbar, drill, blowtorch, nitroglycerin. That is the language of the brochures and websites of the city’s safe dealers, a small but longstanding industry that manages fears in and around the diamond district not only of disasters like fires or explosions, but also of hypothetical supervillains.

When a safe is breached, word travels quickly. What happened? Whose safe was it? How did they get in?

Those were the sorts of questions raised last week after a team of burglars broke into a jeweler’s office on West 36th Street on New Year’s Eve. The crime was widely reported for its scope — the thieves made off with $6 million in diamonds and other gems — and its brazen timing, occurring as the ball dropped six blocks away in a neighborhood teeming with police officers. Surveillance video showing two people hitting a sixth-floor door with hammers was taken immediately after midnight, the police said, when the sound of cheers would have most likely drowned out any banging.