Project Iceworm: The Top-Secret Nuclear City Buried Under Ice

Project Iceworm: The Top-Secret Nuclear City Buried Under Ice

How the US Army Built a Nuclear-Powered Base in Greenland to Hide 600 Missiles

In the brutal sub-zero winter of 1960, two hundred miles east of Thule Air Base in Greenland, the endless white expanse of the Arctic ice sheet appeared completely devoid of human life.

Yet forty feet beneath the wind-scoured glacial crust lay a humming subterranean metropolis.

Powered by a portable PM-2A nuclear reactor, "Camp Century" featured heated living quarters, a hospital, a theater, a barbershop, and scientific laboratories, all interconnected by three miles of illuminated tunnels carved directly through solid ice.

Officially, it was a research station. In reality, it was Project Iceworm: a top-secret plan to build a 2,500-mile network of underground railway tunnels hiding 600 nuclear missiles beneath the Greenland ice sheet.

The Arctic Missile Ambition

Conceived during the height of the Cold War, Project Iceworm was designed to solve a critical strategic vulnerability: Soviet satellite detection.

Pentagon planners envisioned deploying modified medium-range ballistic missiles on specialized subterranean railcars buried beneath the Arctic ice. Because Greenland lies on the shortest flight path to the Soviet Union, missiles launched from the polar ice cap could strike Moscow with minimal warning time.

To power the underground city, the Army installed the world’s first prefabricated, portable nuclear power plant, which generated 1,900 kilowatts of electricity deep beneath the snow.

Crushed by the Creeping Glacier

Constructed using Swiss rotary snowplows to dig massive trenches that were then arched over with corrugated steel, Camp Century housed two hundred soldiers who lived in comfort while blizzards raged outside at minus-sixty degrees.

However, military engineers critically underestimated glacial plasticity. The Greenland ice sheet is not a static formation; it is a dynamic, moving river of ice that constantly deforms under gravity.

"The walls began closing in on us. Glacial creep was buckling our steel arches and warping the train tracks faster than we could cut the ice away."
— U.S. Army Polar Research and Development Center Report (1962)

Engineers labored with chainsaws to carve back intruding ice, but the glacier crushed the tunnels faster than crews could work, forcing the Pentagon to cancel the project in 1963.

The Secret Buried for Decades

The nuclear reactor was removed in 1964, and the base was abandoned in 1966. Planners assumed accumulating snow would bury the site forever. The project remained classified until 1997, when a Danish parliamentary inquiry brought it to light.

Project Iceworm remains one of the most audacious, bizarre engineering efforts of the nuclear age—a stark reminder of how the relentless power of nature can overpower the grandest ambitions of military empires.

Join the Historical Discussion

Do you think the US government should undertake an international cleanup operation to retrieve the buried toxic remnants of Camp Century before the melting ice exposes them? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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