NASA discovers a 'Secret City' built by US military to survive a nuclear attack

A NASA aircraft discovered a hidden Cold War-era military base under the Greenland ice sheet in April 2024. The plane, equipped with ice-penetrating radar, located the remains of Camp Century during a survey.

Camp Century was a US military base built in the 1960s as part of Project Iceworm. The project aimed to create a network of tunnels to house and launch nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union. The base was abandoned in 1967 due to high costs and unstable ice conditions.

“We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first,” said Chad Greene, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they've never been seen before,” he added.


The tunnels were designed to withstand the pressure of missile launches through the ice. However, melting ice now threatens to expose hazardous materials left at the site, including fuel and other contaminants. The US government acknowledged this risk in 2017 and pledged to work with Denmark and Greenland to address the problem.

Scientists say the melting ice also impacts sea level rise projections. “Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” said Alex Gardner, another JPL scientist.

NASA will use the survey data to study the effects of climate change on the ice sheet. The discovery of Camp Century serves as a reminder of the Cold War and highlights the ongoing challenges of climate change.

What Was Project Iceworm?

According to Wikipedia, Project Iceworm was a secret U.S. Army initiative during the Cold War aimed at creating a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites beneath Greenland's ice sheet. The goal was to establish a resilient system capable of withstanding a first strike and targeting the Soviet Union. However, the project never progressed, as the missiles were never deployed, and Denmark's approval was neither sought nor obtained. This information came to light through declassified documents in 1996.