Publisher's Synopsis
At the height of the Cold War, the US Army secretly began work on a military base embedded deep in the Greenland ice cap. Officially named Camp Century and defined as a scientific research station, this facility held an undisclosed potential to bring about mass destruction. The long-term plan of the United States: up to 600 nuclear warheads, buried in the ice, and aimed at the Soviet Union. In 1963, just three years after the camp was established, the Americans gave up their controversial strategy, and in 1966 they abandoned the base. Nevertheless, controversies over Camp Century have cooled political and diplomatic relations between the United States, Greenland and Denmark on several occasions, before, during and after its brief life. Camp Century. Cold War City under the Greenland Ice Sheet is the first comprehensive account of the US Army's "city under the ice". Here, two Danish historians of science - Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen and Henry Nielsen - unravel the history and circumstances surrounding this extraordinary military installation. Moving from the post-war years up to the present, they follow the intertwining threads of high-level politics, top-secret memos, ice-core research, media angles, daily life beneath the ice, and the specter of long-buried environmental problems that will someday resurface as the Greenland ice cap slowly melts.
