The concept of an underground military base hidden beneath a glacier might sound like it belongs in a spy movie, but it was indeed a reality for the US military.
Recently declassified documents have shed light on the story of this secret base, which is now abandoned. With the current rate of ice melting globally, it’s fortunate that the base is no longer operational. We’ve seen how excessive melting can lead to glaciers tipping over due to top-heaviness, although such an event might not occur here for many thousands of years.
During the Cold War, the US established an underground city known as Camp Century in Greenland, located on the polar ice cap. Officially, it was presented as a research facility to both the public and the Danish Government. As highlighted by President Donald Trump’s recent interest in the territory, Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
However, beneath its surface, Camp Century was a hub of secret activity, featuring a network of tunnels and missile silos, all connected by rail systems. This setup was a dream scenario for conspiracy theorists.
The construction of this extensive base took two years, involving the excavation of hundreds of feet of snow. The facility was equipped with laboratories, offices, living quarters, showers, a library, and even a barber shop.
The endeavor was flawed from the beginning due to a critical oversight: glaciers are dynamic and constantly in motion. They expand, contract, and shift, making them unsuitable foundations for large-scale constructions.
By 1960, efforts were made to bring a nuclear reactor online at the site. Shortly after its activation, a leak occurred, raising concerns that radiation might eventually reach the ocean.
Years of battling the encroaching ice followed, with soldiers using electric chainsaws to widen narrowing tunnels. With the risk of missiles becoming unstable, officials decided to terminate the project, withdrawing personnel in 1966 and shutting down the nuclear reactor three years earlier.
In 1969, Austin Kovacs, a research engineer for the US Army, returned to the site for a survey, only to find the base in deteriorated condition.
The full scope of Camp Century and the innovative American engineering that went into it became publicly known when documents were declassified in 1996.
When the Army left the camp in 1966, they believed the site would eventually be buried under ice, never to be uncovered. However, they did not anticipate the impact of climate change.
In 2016, scientists warned that melting ice in Greenland might reveal the base, along with its radioactive, toxic, and human wastes.
Study author Mike MacFerrin remarked that it was just a ‘matter of time’ before these substances could reach the ocean.
In a recent development, NASA unexpectedly captured an image of the camp during a flyover intended to study Greenland’s ice sheet.