The U.S. Army's Top Secret Arctic nuclear base under the ice - "Camp Century" restored classified film.
In the late 1950's, during the height of the Cold War, the Pentagon created a "secret base" in the Arctic for "research purposes".
Project Iceworm was the code name for a top-secret US Army program during the Cold War to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice – close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union – was kept secret from the Danish government. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized "cover" project, known as Camp Century, was launched in 1960.
The secret Project Iceworm was to be a system of tunnels 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) in length, used to deploy up to 600 nuclear missiles, that would be able to reach the USSR in case of nuclear war.
Within three years after it was excavated, ice core samples taken by geologists working at Camp Century demonstrated that the glacier was moving much faster than anticipated and would destroy the tunnels and planned launch stations in about two years. The facility was evacuated in 1965, and the nuclear generator removed. Project Iceworm was canceled, and Camp Century closed in 1966.
In the end it goes to show what lengths the US military industrial complex would undertake to control the Soviet Union - or any other country or region.
The ultimate question - was there ever a release of radioactive waste into the Arctic environment?
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