So I’m not entirely sure how I stumbled onto this tonight, but the fact is that I did and it’s actually kind of cool. The idea is that the Army wanted to learn about the feasibility of working under the ice in Greenland … albeit for the purpose of hiding nuclear missiles for us to lob at the Soviet Union should the need arise … and so they built this impressive ice fort that consisted of 21 trenches, enough living quarters and food and whatnot for 200 people, and even its own nuclear power plant to supply electricity to the facility – the first portable power plant of its kind!
I thought that the documentary was pretty interesting to watch, narrated by a young Walter Cronkite, that ultimately served as a very public cover story for the project’s real purpose. Granted, the results of the study proved that their nuclear missile plan wasn’t really practical because only five years later, the ice and snow had shifted enough that the facility had to be abandoned, but it’s still kind of neat to see the thing take shape in the first place, considering both just how cold it must have been to work up there as well as just how warm the inside of the facility must’ve been managed to when you see guys working in t-shirts later on!
Definitely not the workplace for me, but still very cool, indeed. 😉