America's Secret Underground Ice Fortresses 134
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."
Wow, this generation sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Truth, fiction, stranger than (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, this generation sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
and by the late 1960's the USA was a toxic waste dump like china is today because people would build and screw the local communities. in the 1980's there was a smog haze over NYC that's not there today due to all the enviromental laws and advances in the last 40 years
Re:Wow, this generation sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
You completely miss Dr. Spork's point. He's talking about the ability to put the plan into action, not the quality of the plan. This may have been a bad plan, especially in hindsight, but their ability to execute it with efficiency should be applauded. That was also the same generation that brought us the U.S. highway system and put a man on the moon.
Today we can't even build a train - even if funding were approved it would probably take decades to bring a modern transportation system to the U.S. because of all the red tape. It doesn't matter if we have the resources to do great things if we don't even try to do them, if we have a system which misdirects the resources, or if the vast majority, such as yourself, preaches apathy.
Re:Wow, this generation sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
So being able to put any old bullshit plan into action is manly? That goes for a "point"? Meanwhile, I'm deemed a troll haha.. IOW correct ^^
I could not disagree more. But in the spirit of peace, I'm not gonna invoke the Nazis on this. Even though they're kinda screaming for it.
Re:Nukes in Greenland? (Score:4, Insightful)
Late 1950s... Denmark was about as politically relevant to the U.S. as the Netherlands were to Hitler.