For the people who wonder why we decry the death of big science, I suggest you marvel at this: early on in the Cold War, the U.S. Army built a nuclear-powered (!) base 800 miles from the North Pole, underneath Greenland’s ice cap. It was the product of Project Iceworm, a fantastically-named plan to set up mobile missile launch sites under the ice, which served as both camouflage and a staging ground that’s much closer to Russia than the continental U.S.The U.S. used a project called Camp Century as a cover, which the Army’s PR machine spread far and wide. Camp Century was essentially billed as a test of new designs for cheap (read: not including missile silos) Arctic bases. But while the flim-flam bases were being built on the surface, massive tunnels were being constructed below.On top of a pile of cool photos, Defense Tech dug up the history of the base:The 200-man base was massive , described by some as an underground city, and consisted of 21 steel-arch covered trenches; the longest of which was 1,100-feet long, 26-feet wide and 26-feet high. These tunnels contained numerous prefabricated buildings that were up to 76-feet long. The base was powered by a portable PM-2A nuclear reactor that produced two megawatts of power for the facility.
In all, the base featured:
Living quarters, a kitchen and mess hall, latrines and showers, a recreation hall and theater, a library and hobby shops, a dispensary, operating room and a ten bed infirmary, a laundry facility, a post exchange, scientific labs, a cold storage warehouse, storage tanks, a communications center, equipment and maintenance shops, supply rooms and storage areas, a nuclear power plant, a standby diesel-electric power plant, administrative buildings, utility buildings, a chapel and a barbershop.You can see more ice base shots at Defense Tech, and a video about Camp Century below, but don’t expect to visit anytime soon. In 1966, eight years after the initial studies were started, Project Iceworm was cancelled because, over time, the ice sheets shifted so much that the tunnels weren’t stable. Still, it’s fun (and ridiculously frightening) to know that the Army spent the 60s riding the wave of its batshit-crazy nuclear ambitions.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.
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