A secret Cold War-era US mis­sion to plan mis­sile launch sites under the ice in Green­land. The plan was to dig 2,500 miles of tun­nels in which 600 nuclear mis­siles could be stored and per­haps some­day launched. Green­land was an ide­al loca­tion because of its prox­im­i­ty to Rus­sia. It was kept secret from Den­mark, of which Green­land is a con­stituent coun­try. As a cov­er sto­ry, the US Army claimed it was build­ing Camp Cen­tu­ry, a Dan­ish-sanc­­tioned “research facil­i­ty.” In real­i­ty, it was all a cov­er; the under­ground research facil­i­ty gave the US an excuse to dig under­ground to install mis­siles. Peo­ple lived and worked there year-round—the under­ground camp includ­ed a chapel, a the­ater, and a hob­by shop, all con­tained in inter­con­nect­ed tun­nels. All the pow­er was sup­plied by the world’s first mobile nuclear reac­tor. While the camp used some tra­di­tion­al build­ing mate­ri­als like wood and steel, most of the tun­nels were sim­ply dug into the ice. It was pro­ject­ed to last ten years with­out sig­nif­i­cant main­te­nance, but the glac­i­ers moved faster than expect­ed, even­tu­al­ly ren­der­ing the camp unus­able. It was evac­u­at­ed and com­plete­ly aban­doned in 1967.

The U.S. mil­i­tary assumed that con­stant snow­fall and crush­ing glac­i­ers would per­ma­nent­ly envel­op the research facil­i­ty. How­ev­er, in 2016, an inves­ti­ga­tion found that because glob­al warm­ing has caused the ice sheet cov­er­ing Camp Cen­tu­ry to melt, the site could be dis­cov­ered by the end of the cen­tu­ry, and per­haps soon­er. If and when that hap­pens, any waste — radioac­tive or oth­er­wise — that is dis­cov­ered will be tak­en with the base.