From church to dormitories: Inside a secret US military base under Greenland ice, rediscovered by NASA

There's much hiding beneath ice in Greenland and amid the growing diplomatic war of words over the future of the vast Arctic territory, a new kind of threat seems to be brewing. A plan made by the US during the Cold War could prove to be detrimental to it's dreams of occupation of world's biggest island, which belongs to Denmark.

The threat was first discovered by a NASA flyover in 2024, when a routine radar mapping mission noticed part of a vast structure jutting out of the vast expanse of ice. A result of the climate change that is causing Greenland's ice sheets to recede.

What is the threat?

Dubbed 'city under the ice' the large structure revealed to be a long-abandoned military base that was constructed up to 118ft under the ice as a part of a secret project to protect America's nuclear capability in case the USSR unleashed Armageddon on its mainland.




Called Camp Century, it was originally built as a self-contained community under the ice sheet and contains its own dormitories, church, medical centre and even a small nuclear-powered reactor.

At the time the island was home to 10 US operational bases and the community of military personnel and scientists existed there for around seven years. It was opened in 1960 to develop construction techniques and data about building under the ice.

Why were the military bases made?

The creation of the military bases was a part of Project Iceworm, a Cold War scheme made public in 1996 that planned to install numerous nuclear launch sites under the ice cap so that the US could retaliate if the mainland was taken out via a nuclear strike.

However, shifts in the ice sheet made it impossible to create a permanent structure in such a location for a long term. From glacial movements causing tunnels to collapse to sewage flooding and smell of human faeces, numerous problems came to the surface level.

In addition to this, nuclear and chemical waste produced by its reactor and other operations was buried under the ice. At the time, scientists thought it could be a permanent way to store the hazardous material.

What lies in the future?

However, with years of climate change, nature has not only exposed the base but also could trigger an acute environmental disaster and expose the radioactive material, chemical waste and diesel fuel buried under the ice.

"What climate change did was press the gas pedal to the floor," said James White, University of Colorado climate scientist to the Mail. "The question is whether it's going to come out in hundreds of years, thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years. Climate change just means it's going to happen much faster than anyone expected."

International researchers working with the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) have estimated that around 9200 tonnes of physical waste is abandoned at the former Camp Century site. Furthermore, barrels of nuclear waste and around 200,000 litres of fuel and other chemicals are also present.