Camp Century
The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice
Columbia University Press · Print & ebook · July 27, 2021
At the height of the Cold War, the United States Army secretly began work on a base embedded deep in the Greenland ice cap: Camp Century.
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- Who it’s for
- Explore the secret Arctic base through its military ambitions, scientific research, and unresolved environmental risks.
- Genres
- Cold War History, Nuclear Warfare, Polar Regions History
- Published
- Columbia University Press, July 27, 2021
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For younger readers: Spies, Ice Drift, In the Shadow of the Moon
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Start with this bookAbout this book
At the height of the Cold War, the United States Army secretly began work on a base embedded deep in the Greenland ice cap: Camp Century. Officially defined as a scientific research station, this facility had an undisclosed purpose: to aim up to 600 nuclear warheads, buried in the ice, at the Soviet Union. In 1966, just six years after the camp was established, the United States gave up this provocative strategy and abandoned the base.
Continue reading
Despite its brief life, Camp Century has been the cause of controversies from diplomatic relations between the United States and its Arctic allies, Denmark and Greenland, to the risks of radioactive waste abandoned at the site. This book is the first comprehensive account of the U.S. Army’s “city under the ice.” Beginning with the Truman administration’s vision of military superiority in the Arctic and continuing through present-day concerns over the effects of climate change, Kristian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen unravel the extraordinary history of this clandestine installation. Drawing on sources including top-secret memos and never-before-seen photographic evidence, they follow the intertwining threads of high-level politics, ice-core research, media representations, daily life beneath the ice, and the specter of long-buried environmental problems that will one day resurface. Camp Century reveals a hidden chapter of Cold War history—and why, as the Greenland ice cap slowly melts, this story is not yet over.
City Under the Ice
Explore the secret Arctic base through its military ambitions, scientific research, and unresolved environmental risks.
Come here for
- The plan to aim nuclear warheads at the Soviet Union
- Daily life beneath Greenland’s ice
Expect
- High-level politics and ice-core research
- Diplomatic tensions and radioactive waste concerns
Where it sits
| Polar Regions History | 80% |
|---|---|
| Cold War History | 78% |
| Nuclear Warfare | 63% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- U.S. Military History
- 20th-Century America
- 20th-Century History
- Scandinavian History
- Authors
- Henry Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfeldt Nielsen
- Publisher
- Columbia University Press
- Published
- July 27, 2021
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- U.S. Military History