While flying over Greenland and using advanced radar technology to map the continent’s ice, NASA scientists discovered something incredible, an abandoned Cold-War-era U.S. military base 100 feet under the surface. Dubbed Camp Century, it comprised 9,800 feet of underground tunnels and was originally at the center of something called Project Iceworm. The location was disguised as a research facility, but in fact was designed to house nuclear missiles, lying dormant for potential strikes on the Soviet Union. Built between 1959 and 1960, the base was decommissioned and abandoned by 1967.
Camp Century was actually not a secret. The Army even marketed its opening back in the day, but maintained that it was for research, not a potential nuclear arsenal. It was meant to house more tunnels, missile launch centers, and soldiers numbering 11,000 as a sort of underground city. But none of that came to pass, simply because it wasn’t feasible. However, the operation wasn’t a complete bust. On-site research contributed to a greater understanding of the Earth’s ancient climate and helped profile Greenland’s distant past of a lush landscape with diverse wildlife and flora. Although Camp Century is uninhabited today, it does contain over 47,000 gallons of nuclear waste that was never removed. That’s a problem, considering the waste could be exposed as Greenland’s ice sheet is losing more ice than previously believed.
Rediscovering an underground Cold War-era base
NASA scientists discovered the base using technology called Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), which is similar to LiDAR. It’s meant to map the internal layers of ice sheets via radio waves that penetrate the ground, and are then used to generate detailed imagery. As for what’s inside Camp Century, it’s mostly nothing, except waste. Before the base was decommissioned, it featured a medium-power nuclear reactor that was ultimately removed. However, it generated nuclear waste which was left behind. Scientists believe that the area in Greenland where Camp Century is located will begin losing ice by the year 2090, which would expose the nuclear waste. But at the moment, the base and its contaminants remain sealed.
For the NASA scientists who were studying Greenland’s under-ice makeup, coming across the hidden facility was quite a shock. “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a co-leader of the project and scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an agency statement. It’s not everyday you find a hidden military base in such a remote and harsh location, harsh being the key term there. Temperatures in the area can drop as low as -70 degrees Fahrenheit with wind speeds as high as 125 miles per hour. Cold and harsh as it is, melting glaciers continue to reveal new land. And there may be more hidden under the ice, like the subglacial lake scientists believe is buried under Greenland.
