Camp Century and Project Iceworm: The Atomic City Hidden Under Greenland's Ice

Short Summary

The B1M takes viewers to Camp Century, a secret underground city carved into Greenland’s ice during the late 1950s. The film explains how a portable nuclear reactor powered a remote Arctic town while a crew drilled tunnels, built a mock city, and endured extreme cold and isolation. Officially framed as glaciology and survival research, the project was secretly a base for hundreds of nuclear missiles as part of Project Iceworm. The narrative also covers declassification, legal and environmental fallout, and the race to outpace Cold War threats, with the ice eventually reclaiming the site and leaving behind toxic waste. It ends with reflections on risk, waste, and the legacy of Cold War engineering.

Background and Cold War Context

The video places Camp Century within the broader Cold War scramble for strategic advantage. Sputnik beeps and the fear of missile attachment to space technologies spurred the US to explore hardened, remote bases near the Soviet Union. Greenland’s location, close to major Arctic routes and the Soviet frontier, made it a focal point for a polar defense strategy. Thule Air Base established in 1951 became a key node in this plan, illustrating how political paranoia and technological ambition shaped military architecture in extreme environments.

Camp Century: Construction in the Arctic

Construction occurred over two summers in 1959 and 1960, using cut and cover tunnels bored into the ice and then sealed with prefabricated structures. Swiss peer ploughs cleared vast trenches, while curved metal sheets and snow insulation created a self-contained town underground. A main street system linked living quarters, latrines, generators, and mess halls. Engineers faced relentless cold, shifting ice, and heat from machinery which required massive ventilation to prevent melting and instability. The engineering showcase demonstrated how to create livable spaces in one of Earth’s most hostile environments.

The Hidden Purpose Revealed

Although Cam Century was publicly pitched as a scientific outpost for glaciology and human survival, declassified documents later reveal a far more ambitious goal. Project Iceworm envisioned housing more than 600 mobile nuclear missiles within an extensive tunnel network beneath the ice. The Danish government, while publicly downplaying the military significance, faced a difficult decision about allowing such plans near Greenland. The base was a bold prototype meant to project strategic deterrence in a form that could withstand first strike vulnerability and detection.

Life at the Ice Town

Life in Camp Century blended luxury with danger. The base relied on a portable nuclear reactor for energy, and water was sourced from melted ice. Residents faced isolation, yet the camp operated like a small town with kitchens, entertainment, and high calorie rations. The psychological dimension included hunger experiments and tests of endurance as the military sought to understand human performance in extreme environments, informing future spaceflight and life-support systems. The environment was both a frontier and a laboratory for human adaptability.

Decline, Abandonment, and Aftermath

By 1963 the reactor was offline, and three years later the base was abandoned. Ice movement and structural stresses rendered tunnels unsafe, and the site fell into ruin while resources and maintenance costs mounted. Technological evolution, including submarine-launched missiles and true ICBMs, made Iceworm obsolete. Beyond military calculations, the project left environmental concerns in its wake: toxic, radioactive waste buried under the ice and the risk of future melting exposing the hazards. These issues sparked legal and ethical debates about responsibility and cleanup in a shifting climate.

Legacy and Rediscovery

Decades after abandonment, radar and mapping efforts revealed Camp Century’s remains in Greenland’s ice. The melting ice threatens to release legacy waste and contaminants, complicating Danish-US responsibilities under treaty terms. The story of Camp Century stands as a cautionary tale about ambition without sustainable safeguards, a relic of a peculiar era of Cold War experimentation that still resonates as climate change redefines the fate of buried infrastructure.