Underground in Greenland: The "Secret City" the US Tried to Hide

A NASA test flight over Greenland has unexpectedly revealed the remains of Camp Century, a secret US military base from the Cold War buried under ice for 60 years. The base included a nuclear reactor and a tunnel system for positioning missiles against the Soviet Union. The concern: global warming could expose radioactive waste left at the site.

A routine NASA test flight, using a new ground-penetrating radar over northwestern Greenland, unexpectedly revealed the remains of Camp Century – a secret US military base built in 1959 during the Cold War and abandoned in 1964. The base, nicknamed "the city under the ice," was officially presented as a scientific research facility, but its true purpose was to station up to 600 nuclear warheads as close as possible to Soviet territory. It operated as a small independent city, including a hospital, church, theater, and living quarters, connected by a network of 21 tunnels powered by electricity and heat from a portable nuclear reactor. Ice movement threatened the stability of the tunnels, forcing the military to abandon the site. Upon abandonment, chemical, biological, and radioactive waste, along with tens of thousands of liters of diesel fuel, were left behind under the assumption that the ice would bury them forever. Now, climate models warn that global warming could lead to the exposure of these hazardous materials. The project was part of the Pentagon's "Project Iceworm," which was canceled due to glacial movement. Despite its military purpose, the site had significant scientific value: ice cores drilled by researchers there provided early data on climate development over 100,000 years.