Book ID: CBB637613279

Camp Century: The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice (2021)

unapi

Nielsen, Henry (Author)
Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfelt (Author)


Columbia University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 352
Language: English

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. 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.

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Reviewed By

Review Antoine Bousquet (October 2022) Review of "Camp Century: The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice". Technology and Culture (pp. 1234-1235). unapi

Review David M. Watry (2022) Review of "Camp Century: The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice". Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 101-103). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB637613279/

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Authors & Contributors
Martin-Nielsen, Janet
Benjamin W. Goossen
Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfelt
Nielsen, Henry
Heymann, Matthias
Ross, Colin A.
Concepts
Science and war; science and the military
Cold War
Environmental sciences
Science and politics
Cross-national interaction
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
Places
United States
Greenland
Soviet Union
Arctic regions
Polar regions
Norway
Institutions
United States. Army
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Partial Test Ban Treaty; Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
Strategic Defense Initiative
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