U.S. nuclear base hidden under Greenland's ice for decades
68 comments
·May 14, 2025perihelions
A couple other threads (on Project Iceworm and its tunnels),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 ("NASA aircraft uncover Cold War nuclear missile tunnels under Greenland ice sheet (space.com)"—42 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42249801 ("California scientists accidentally find nuclear fever dream in Arctic snow (sfgate.com)"—4 commments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374013 ("The U.S. Army tried portable nuclear power at remote bases 60 years ago (atlasobscura.com)" (2021)—152 comments)
keepamovin
There's very interesting bases in Greenland even today.
runjake
Such as?
Presumably, you mean Pituffik Space Base[1], formerly Thule Air Base, and Thule Site J?
ipdashc
Thule/Pituffik is why the whole "buying Greenland" thing never made sense to me, no matter how you try to look at it or steelman it... Before they were threatened with being purchased and invaded, Greenland and Denmark were our allies, and it's not like Greenland had a shortage of (non-green) land. If it was about military access, we could have just asked to build another base.
keepamovin
OK there's that (Site J is fascinating). But there's also another in-mountain base near Helheim Glacier, and an under ice research base midway between Helheim and Jacobshavn Glacier (Site G or H?)
lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
hammock
The most interesting ones are probably secret.
“Helix” was a fictional TV show about a bio lab in the arctic.
alnwlsn
Is this the one where they brought in a nuclear reactor?
edit: Yes, it was the PM-2A. A "portable" (but larger) version similar to the infamous SL-1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program#Lis...
hyperific
Here's a documentary on Camp Century https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.2569752
perihelions
This seems a color version of the same,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5tWbTCocA ("Camp Century, The City Under The Ice - 1964 - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage")
(Found via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408226#30411047 (under "Newcomer's Welcome Package: Thule Air Base, Greenland [pdf] (militaryonesource.mil)"—60 comments (nb. the OP is a dead link)))
yubblegum
Is the nuclear reactor still there?
hersko
This is amazing. Would love to see what it looks like down there now.
ChrisMarshallNY
I have a friend that was stationed there. He's pretty old. I think it was in the 1960s.
JKCalhoun
Wild. The most Hoth-like thing I've seen.
hammock
Hoth was almost certainly inspired by Camp Century (first profiled in the Saturday Evening Post in 1960)
wslh
Really.
Offtopic: Andor series is the best Star Wars.
xnx
I too will use any excuse to proselytize Andor. Speaking of Andor, it's the best Star Wars anything of all time and some of the best TV period.
average_r_user
Can confirm, peak Star Wars. All the references to the original movies are on point
alabastervlog
Eh... it's extremely flabby, like most of these franchise-tied TV series (all the Marvel ones have the same problem, both the Netflix and Disney ones, though the Netflix ones are far worse about it). Tons of scenes where I want to yell at the editor "fucking cut away! It's over!" and then it goes on another 20 seconds, shots where it clearly should have cut a couple seconds earlier, whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character, et c, and it adds up.
My best guess for why they do this is that it fills time with fewer set-ups and sets, saving production costs. I can't figure out another angle for how this could be saving money per minute of "content".
The new season makes that really clear, because each 3-episode "movie" is 130ish minutes long and clearly could have been one 90ish minute film without losing anything important at all, still with plenty of time for relaxed-pace character development and such.
jon-wood
> whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character
Modern TV is made to be consumed (I use that word intentionally, not watched) by people who aren't really paying attention to what's happening, so you need to restate any major plot point several times to make sure it sticks.
MrBuddyCasino
Its all talk and very little action. The Mandalorian was better in this regard.
Calwestjobs
yes, nuclear submarine can not shoot nuclear warhead thru ice that is true.
spwa4
[flagged]
null
reaperducer
Way off topic, but it makes me wonder if Trump can't "get" Greenland the way he wants, if he'll just order Google et.al. to change their maps to show it as part of the United States anyway, and let cultural seepage do the work for him.
"This must be America. It says so on Google Maps!"
draw_down
[dead]
https://archive.ph/bTZuA