Slashdot Mirror
America's Secret Underground Ice Fortresses
Hugh Pickens writes "With the advent of long-range bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles in the 1950s, it was inevitable that military attention would be drawn to remote but strategic arctic regions. Now Defense Tech reports on Project Iceworm — America's secret cold war plan to build a network of underground missile bases under the Greenland ice cap capable of launching 'Iceman' ICBM missiles at Russia. The first base, 'Camp Century,' built 800 miles from the North Pole, contained 21 steel-arch covered trenches; the longest of which was 1,100-feet long, 26-feet wide and 26-feet high. The massive base, constructed to house 200 troops, was officially built to conduct scientific research. But the real reason was apparently to test out the feasibility of burying nuclear missiles below the ice, since Greenland is so much closer to Russia than the ICBM fields located in the continental U.S. If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles with clusters of missile launch centers spaced four miles apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after 5 years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. Camp Century was powered by a portable nuclear power plant designated PM-2A, the first of the U.S. Army's portable reactors to actually produce power, and was rated at two megawatts of electrical power, also supplying steam to operate the well that provided water for the troops. The Army team assembled the prefabricated reactor in 77 days, and just nine hours after fuel elements containing forty-three pounds of enriched Uranium-235 were inserted into the reactor, electricity was produced. Maintaining the tunnels at Camp Century required time-consuming and laborious trimming and removal of more than 120 tons of snow and ice each month. The camp, begun in 1959, was abandoned for good in 1966 and it is anticipated that the Greenland icecap, in constant motion, will completely destroy all the tunnels over the course of the coming years."
*Very* cool.
I must admit, the first thought that came to my mind when reading this is, this sounds like a great setting for some spy thriller or such. I mean, an abandoned military base with launch silos, its own nuclear power, and slowly being destroyed by encroaching ice?
The perfect location to have the mastermind's base located in. At the end, the heroes have to race out of the base as it is finally being destroyed by the ice.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
"...The camp, begun in 1959, was abandoned for good in 1966 and it is anticipated that the Greenland icecap, in constant motion, will completely destroy all the tunnels over the course of the coming years."
From TFA: "Camp Century was abandoned for good in 1966. The Greenland icecap, in constant motion, would completely destroy all the tunnels over the course of several years."
I.e. the tunnels would be destroyed over the next several years following 1966. Which was over 40 years ago. These tunnels are gone. TFA even pretty much says as much: "Today, it is likely that most of Camp Century has been reclaimed by the ice."
friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless! Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed, in Greenland? - Vizzini
I understand Fezzik so much better now.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
While it scores virtually infinite cartoon-supervillain points(seriously, a massive, ever-expanding labarynthine nuclear-powered ice fortress?), I have to imagine that the cost/benefit got a lot less exciting once the more prosaic 'lots of nuclear submarines sneaking around, also we can use them to attack ships, in a pinch,' strategy became viable.
Incidentally, for anybody who likes our dread overlord Cthulhu, and wishes to be eaten first, this sounds like something ripped straight from A Colder War...
The camp, begun in 1959, was abandoned for good in 1966
Its a victim of soviet h-bomb development. The planning phase was "more or less" before decent soviet h-bombs (around 1960-ish) so everything was too close together, and/or proper spacing in a h-bomb era would make it unscalable. It would have worked pretty well as designed in a pre-h-bomb environment.
Before someone gets all excited about the timelines, a rather large military project like h-bomb deployment is not done like software, where you begin distribution as soon as a beta version complies... I'm well aware they did a tech demonstrator in the early 50s and had a reasonable device for testing by the Very late 50s... But it wasn't clear that this base would be pointless until the 60s, when it was cancelled.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Or a bunch of rebels. ;)
I saw a documentary on this, with ice tunnels, mobile reactors and power generators, secret ice bases... Oh yes, the Empire Strikes Back
But I didn't know the U.S.S.R. had giant four-legged robot death-machines.
It then goes on in the next paragraph to talk about an expedition that went to look at the camp in 1969, and found that the camp was already extremely damaged, and notes that "Today, it is likely that most of Camp Century has been reclaimed by the ice."
I have to wonder if the submitter consciously altered this to make it sound as if it's still in good shape right now, thinking that a camp that someone could possibly occupy and use would generate more interest than one that's likely an unsalvageable mess now.
America's Secret Underground Ice Fortresses
Thanks to Slashdot it's no longer a secret. You people are really starting to annoy the government. Yet another excuse to allow more H-1B Visa applications to be approved.
So you're saying that we could once build an entire nuclear powerplant in 77 days and get it running within 9 hours... in an ice cave, in Greenland? If the people who did that could see us now, they'd insult our manhoods.
Can we stop linking to io9 in the stories ? I'm sure there are other websites talking about this, and io9 is just a pain in the *** to load and requires javascript to display the contents of an article.
Pity it's a copy/paste-job from another site, and at least a year and a half old: http://gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id9.html
It could be smugglers. There are so many uncharted settlements.
During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap.
Not so cool.
Project Iceworm - America's secret cold war plan to build a network of underground missile bases under the Greenland ice cap
Now I know.
I loved those magazines. Basically, each cover had something from a James Bond movie on the cover that would never be built.
"project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles"
Hardly, since the bases were supposed to be spread apart by 4 miles or so. Perhaps the total would be spread out over 52,000 square miles, but surely it wouldn't actually cover anything like 52,000 square miles.
I'd have to think it has more of a "Fortress of Solitude" vibe to it.
I am officially gone from
Just don't exit hyperspace too close to the system. If you did, you'd be as clumsy as you are stupid.
It was so secret that they sponsored a contest with the Boy Scouts to spend "summer camp" under the ice. One scout from the U.S. and one from Denmark (Greenland is Danish).
gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id9.html
They were still in use in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider"
Which was in 2003.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Camp Century appears to have been very similar to the original South Pole Station built in 1956-1957 for the IGY by the US Navy, minus the nuclear reactor and the plan for the Dr. Strangelove missile complex.
The Navy did install a small nuclear reactor at McMurdo Station, which leaked, requiring a large chunk of the hill that it was located on to be excavated and hauled away for disposal.
Would the US government need to go to an ATM machine and input a PIN number in order to withdraw money to pay for its ICBM missiles?
I don't think Riddick would enjoy having his budget cut.
Considering that the current USA government budget is so broken that you could cut EVERY PENNY of military spending, AND ALL OTHER forms of discretionary spending, and there would STILL be a large budget deficit ...
I appreciate the need to keep military spending to reasonable levels. But budgets aren't balanced by cuts to one area alone, and the USA's is no exception. Every government spent dollar needs to be on the table, regardless of prior obligation.
So... Denmark was cool with that?
Hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce off a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?
The camp, begun in 1959, was abandoned for good in 1966
Its a victim of soviet h-bomb development. The planning phase was "more or less" before decent soviet h-bombs (around 1960-ish) so everything was too close together, and/or proper spacing in a h-bomb era would make it unscalable. It would have worked pretty well as designed in a pre-h-bomb environment.
It was common in the 50's for multiple competing solutions to be implemented in parallel before exhaustively studying whether any of them would work. No one was sure that ICBM's would really work so they also started work on supersonic bombers, nuclear powered cruise missiles, and, apparently a plan to put shorter range missiles closer to the enemy.
By 1960, Titan I was available with enough range to be launched from anywhere in the continental US. They made the case for a Greenland missile base less compelling, though presumably the IRBM's in Greenland could have been launched quicker. Starting in 1963, the Titan II could be launched immediately from the silos, eliminating the 15 minute pause at the surface for fueling. Building a ice base in Greenland must have seemed like a great deal of effort for no military purpose.
PUN INTENDED
It was for your own good. After all, we all know that Radiation is good for you.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Stuck North of the Arctic Circle for a night that lasts 6 months with Rock Hudson. No thanks.
Have gnu, will travel.
Perhaps there's a chair which powers a millenia old weapons platform. Better call MacGuyver to control it.
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/55000/55167/earth_lights_lrg.jpg
Anyone ever notice the really bright spot on the norther coast of Alaska? The big swath north of Anchorage, out by Prudhoe Bay...
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
In the USA, butter kills more people than guns.
Typical annual deaths from heart disease and diabetes: 665,000
Typical annual deaths from guns: 30,000 (Includes justifiable homicide, murder, suicide, accidents)
You know what that means: SAVE AMERICA! BAN BUTTER NOW!
Perhaps we can get some of the hippies to move over and Occupy Greenland.
I would be the tenth person or so, if I pointed out that the summary author basically wrote "the tunnels will disappear in the coming years" while the article reads along the lines of "the tunnels disappeared in the years immediately following their creation".
But that's not what's important.
What's important, is that if the ice had NOT reclaimed the tunnels, they would still BE there.
Or, wait, that's actually not important. Well... there's radioactive ice, that's pretty cool.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Womp rats, etc. etc.
Now we have time to build our secret moon base. Yesterday you would have told me we didn't have secret missile silos under Greenland.
With half life on the most radiactive isotopes being few seconds to a few years, it's not really all that radioactive anymore. That's the good thing about radioactive waste - it destroys itself over time.
And knowing is half the battle!
The enemies of Democracy are
During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap.
Not so cool.
One would almost think that becquerels and years are much more important here than gallons.
Ezekiel 23:20
The fortress of solitude? I thought Superman was supposed to be the good guy?
Free Martian Whores!
"During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap."
Why is it that tax-payer money and radioactive/toxic waste always seem to be dumped in the same place?
Ur got put 2 sleep - U got "knocked out", troll-> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2773441&cid=39620303 , and you're also caught red-handed admitting to trolling others, off-topic and all. You're pitiful.
The time frame is a little off I. I was born in Feb. 1959-and he had been working there for 18 months when i was born-and stuff had been going on there a while. My father was a pipefitting foreman for Peter Kiewit and sons-one of the civilian construction/maintenance contractors.
I've met several other people that were there. I think there was more than one nuclear plant(i.e. they had some redundancy).
The security around this all was pretty serious. The construction workers often had know idea what they were working on-or the layout of the facility. I would be VERY careful about assuming the "whole story" has been told here. Some of the facilities I've heard about were more elaborate than one would anticipate for a 200 man military base-or simply an ICBM base.
If folks are seriously interested-and have questions, I can try to forward them.
The USA almost started the Third World War when the Soviet were silently planting missiles in Cuba, and the western media universally depicted the Soviet as evil rogues for doing that, yet it's now evident that the USA had been doing the same thing for decades.
Just let me adjust my tinfoil hat to match the current satellite position.
They may have closed the "scientific research" facility, that just means that it is now fully operational battle station!
ITS A TRAP!
One need to wonder if this crazy idea came out of the Miskatonic University! lolll