Project Iceworm
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19
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7
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Search complete. 19 mentions across 7 episodes found for "Project Iceworm".
Oct 5, 2026
Monica PerezHOST
Great.
Flemming BlicherGUEST
Actually visiting Camp Century and, uh, and, and actually things he says about, uh, Project Iceworm is quite interesting.
Monica PerezHOST
Oh, awesome.
Monica PerezHOST
I love it.
Daven HiskeyHOST
While sold to the public as a peaceful research outpost, the facility actually had a far more sinister secret purpose, which, had it been completed, would have further ratcheted up already high Cold War tensions.
Daven HiskeyHOST
This is the forgotten and fascinating story of Project Iceworm.
Daven HiskeyHOST
Our story begins in the early 1950s.
Daven HiskeyHOST
For the first decade and a half of the Cold War, the primary means of delivering nuclear weapons to their targets was via manned strategic bombers, like the American Boeing B-47 Stratojet and the B-52 Stratofortress or the Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 Bear and Myasishchev M-4 Bison.
Daven HiskeyHOST
Later in the 1980s, both sides also experimented with mounting ICBMs aboard trains, which could be constantly moved around the countryside to prevent them from being targeted.
Daven HiskeyHOST
However, only the Soviet Bazook system, based around the RT-23 Molodets missile, was actively deployed.
Daven HiskeyHOST
But perhaps the strangest proposal for maintaining second strike capability was Project Iceworm, a plan to hide hundreds of medium-range ballistic missiles, or MRBMs, under the Greenland ice sheet.
Daven HiskeyHOST
The plan was first proposed in 1954 by Bernt Balchen, a pioneering Norwegian-born polar explorer, bush pilot, and US Army colonel who outlined the many advantages of siting military installations in Greenland.
Monica PerezHOST
Great
Flemming BlicherGUEST
... actually visiting Camp Century, and, uh, and, and actually things he says about, uh, Project Iceworm is quite interesting.
Monica PerezHOST
Oh, awesome.
Monica PerezHOST
I love it
The Cajun KnightHOST
... questions that a lot of people actually ask themselves and, like, rebuttals from e- e- it would seem sometimes good things.
The Cajun KnightHOST
Other times, like when we're doing an episode on Operation Iceworm in Greenland, how did we end up on a 45-minute diatribe about the New Testament? Like, it's...
The Cajun KnightHOST
It, it, it wasn't needed.
The Cajun KnightHOST
So yeah, a lot of our, our cult members have decided that they don't really wanna hear the religious back and forth and yee-haw.
speaker_1HOST
But what about abandoning a town built entirely under the ice?
speaker_2HOST
Ah, Project Ice Worm.
speaker_1HOST
Yes.
speaker_1HOST
We're talking about Camp Century in Greenland.
CornHOST
A base dug 200 feet into the ice sheet powered by a nuclear reactor.
CornHOST
Its real purpose was Project Iceworm, a plan to tunnel nuclear missiles through the ice so they could be moved around and fired from unpredictable positions.
CornHOST
Which was never built, but the fact that it was planned tells you how seriously the Americans took Greenland during the Cold War.
CornHOST
The ice moves, so the tunnels would have collapsed.
Marcus SommersHOST
Mm-hmm.
Marcus SommersHOST
Project Ice Worm.
Marcus SommersHOST
Where we built a city underneath Greenland to put nukes in there.
Marcus SommersHOST
And then left them.