History

NASA Discovers Secret Cold War Military Base Buried Under Ice In Greenland

BY Guy D. McCardle

Camp Century, the ‘City Under Ice,’ is a haunting Cold War relic, now unearthed by NASA, that echoes both the boundless ambition of military ingenuity and the unforeseen consequences of environmental neglect.

An exposed portion of Camp Century in the early 1960's.

In a twist that could’ve been ripped straight from a spy thriller, NASA scientists have stumbled upon a long-forgotten relic of the Cold War, buried deep beneath Greenland’s icy surface. Camp Century, once dubbed the “City Under Ice,” has resurfaced in the public eye thanks to an accidental discovery during a routine ice survey in April 2024. 

Advertisement

As a former Army officer and current editor of SOFREP, I’ve seen my fair share of military ingenuity, but Camp Century takes the cake. Imagine, if you will, a vast network of tunnels and bunkers stretching for miles beneath the Arctic ice, all part of a top-secret plan to gain the upper hand in a potential nuclear showdown with the Soviets.

Camp century layout
A layout of Camp Century oriented to North. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Accidental Discovery

NASA’s Gulfstream III aircraft, equipped with advanced radar technology, was simply meant to be mapping the ice sheet’s thickness. Instead, it unveiled a Cold War time capsule. Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put it best:

“We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first.”

Advertisement

This wasn’t just any old radar, mind you. The team was using the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), technology that makes previous imaging tech look like a kid’s toy. It revealed individual structures within the base with unprecedented clarity, giving us a window into a world that’s been frozen in time for over half a century.

Advertisement

The Cold War’s Icy Fortress

The Cold War was a time when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were willing to go to incredible lengths to stay one step ahead of each other. Enter Project Iceworm, one of the most ambitious—and outlandish—ideas to come out of that era. The U.S. Army cooked up this top-secret plan in the late 1950s, aiming to create an underground network of nuclear missile launch sites buried beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. It was a bold strategy to counter the Soviet threat, but, spoiler alert, things didn’t exactly go as planned.

To get the ball rolling, the Army built Camp Century in 1959. Officially, this was a scientific research station, but behind the scenes, it was the proving ground for Project Iceworm. Engineers worked like mad to build a three-mile road to haul 6,000 tons of supplies to the site, using cutting-edge Swiss-made Peter Plows to carve deep trenches into the ice. Once the trenches were dug, they were covered with steel arches and topped with snow. Inside these frozen tunnels, they installed prefabricated wooden buildings, creating a fully functional underground facility. By October 1960, the job was done, and Camp Century was up and running with 26 tunnels stretching almost two miles long.

The setup was impressive for something buried under a glacier.

Advertisement

The facility had a 1,000-foot-long “Main Street,” along with barracks, a chapel, a library, a gym, and even a movie theater.

For power, the Army installed a nuclear reactor, the PM-2A, which was a big deal at the time. Eventually, they swapped it out for trusty diesel generators, but that nuclear setup earned Camp Century the nickname “The City Under the Ice.”

The Army’s long-term vision for Project Iceworm was nothing short of staggering. They wanted to dig 2,500 miles of tunnels—enough to stretch from New York to Salt Lake City—and hide 600 specially modified “Iceman” missiles underneath the ice. The whole thing would cover 52,000 square miles, an area three times the size of Denmark, and employ 11,000 military personnel. It was like something out of a Cold War sci-fi novel.

Visitors from Washington
Visitors from Washington DC assessing the viability of the location as a missile launch site.

But, as ambitious as it was, the project ran headfirst into a serious problem: the ice wasn’t as stable as they’d hoped. By 1962, it became painfully obvious that the constant movement of the glacier was wreaking havoc on the tunnels and structures. The Army pulled the plug on Project Iceworm, shutting down Camp Century in 1965. The whole plan was officially scrapped in 1966. I can’t help but wonder how much that cost. 

While it might sound like a failure, Project Iceworm wasn’t a total loss. It gave engineers valuable insights into building in extreme conditions and revealed just how far the military was willing to go to gain an edge during the Cold War. For a brief moment in history, though, the U.S. really did dream of turning Greenland’s ice sheet into a subterranean missile base.

The Environmental Time Bomb

When Camp Century was abandoned in 1967, no one imagined the environmental time bomb being left behind. But as the Greenland ice sheet melts due to climate change, the hazardous waste buried at the site is inching closer to being exposed. The scope of the problem is massive, and the potential consequences are downright alarming.

First, there’s the toxic cocktail left behind. This includes an estimated 200,000 liters (53,000 gallons) of diesel fuel and 240,000 liters (63,000 gallons) of wastewater, which includes raw sewage. If that wasn’t bad enough, the site is also home to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a class of chemicals highly toxic to human health, and an unknown amount of radioactive coolant from the nuclear generator that powered the base.

The hazardous waste isn’t just sitting idle, either. As the ice melts, these pollutants risk leaking into the surrounding environment, covering an area of 55 hectares—about the size of 100 football fields. If released, this toxic stew could seep into local ecosystems, wreaking havoc on plants, animals, and even humans. Even more troubling, these pollutants could make their way to the ocean, where they might disrupt marine ecosystems and climb the food chain, affecting fish and other seafood.

Here’s the kicker: climate models predict that Camp Century’s site could shift from net snowfall to net melting as early as 2090. Once that happens, the release of waste will become unstoppable. It’s like a ticking clock, counting down to a contamination crisis that no one really knows how to handle.

Centurey from above
Camp Century viewed from above.

Cleaning up Camp Century is no small task. The waste is buried tens of meters under the ice, making any attempt at remediation both technically challenging and astronomically expensive. And let’s be honest—this isn’t the kind of problem anyone wants to foot the bill for.

What’s left is a cautionary tale of Cold War ambitions colliding with modern-day climate realities. The mess at Camp Century reminds us of how human activities leave footprints that last far longer than intended. It’s a sobering example of how yesterday’s decisions can come back to haunt us—and why we need to get serious about climate change and its ripple effects.

Lessons from the Ice

The rediscovery of Camp Century is a chilling (no pun intended) reminder of the lengths we went to during the Cold War. It’s a testament to American ingenuity and determination, sure, but it also highlights the long-lasting consequences of our military endeavors. As we grapple with the potential environmental fallout from this long-forgotten base, we’re forced to confront some tough questions. How do we balance national security with environmental responsibility? What other ticking time bombs might be out there, waiting to be exposed by our changing climate? In the end, Camp Century stands as both a marvel of military engineering and a cautionary tale.

It’s a frozen snapshot of a time when the threat of nuclear war loomed large, and no plan seemed too outlandish in the quest for strategic advantage. As we move forward, let’s hope we can learn from both the ingenuity and the oversights of our past. After all, in the world of military strategy, sometimes the most important lessons come from the plans we bury – both figuratively and literally.

Advertisement

What readers are saying

Generating a quick summary of the conversation...

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR