It's certainly incorporating local knowledge though

I think but could be wrong that the article alludes to but does not explicitly state but that door is in fact a joke for instance it is a door that has a file cabinet on the other side and they didn't want people to go through it and they made a joke by labeling it thus and pretending the keys are lost. McMurdo feels like the type of place where someone could acquire a crowbar in under 10 seconds and that is the true key for that door if you ever in fact needed to use it.

A place I used to go to as a kid used to have a giant throw switch which said it would turn off the waterfall if thrown which was a joke they played on kids. It was in fact just the old Master throw switch for the house when they originally electric it up.