Approximately 200 kilometers from the northwest coast of Greenland, beneath dozens of meters of compacted snow, lies Camp Century, a Cold War-era U.S. military base built in 1959. At the time, Greenland was under Danish sovereignty, and the base was officially described as a polar research facility aimed at testing Arctic construction methods and gathering scientific data. The site included 21 tunnels, a mobile nuclear power plant, and accommodations for up to 200 soldiers. These structures were buried beneath the ice and designed to remain there permanently. The base also featured a network of laboratories, a cinema, a hospital, and even a chapel, creating an almost normal living environment for its occupants. Scientists stationed there drilled some of the first ice cores used to study Earth's climate, data that is still referenced today. Despite its scientific appearance, Camp Century was also the site of a classified military project known as Project Iceworm. This initiative aimed to construct an extensive network of tunnels beneath a massive glacier, designed to house 600 nuclear missiles capable of surviving a first strike from the Soviet Union. The plan was ambitious: it would have covered an area three times the size of Denmark with over 4,000 kilometers of tunnels. However, the project never reached full scale, and no missiles were ever deployed. The Danish government, which owned the territory at the time, was not informed of the military aspect of the operation. The ice, which the engineers had assumed would be stable, proved to be in constant motion. This movement made the tunnels unstable, and by 1964, the base was only used intermittently. By 1967, it was completely abandoned, with soldiers leaving behind significant amounts of waste, including 200,000 liters of diesel fuel, 240,000 liters of untreated wastewater, and radioactive materials from the base’s nuclear generator. Researchers estimate that the waste field now covers about 55 hectares, roughly the size of 100 football fields. Over time, snowfall has buried the camp under about 35 meters of ice, but climate change is now threatening to expose this waste again. Global warming has accelerated the melting of Greenland’s ice, particularly in the Arctic, which is warming faster than any other region on Earth. A 2016 study found that the ice covering Camp Century could begin to melt by the end of the century, potentially exposing the buried waste in a process that would be irreversible by 2090. This has raised concerns not only about environmental contamination but also about the political implications of such a scenario. The question of who is responsible for cleaning up the site—Washington or Copenhagen—remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the ice cores taken from Camp Century in the 1960s continue to be vital for climate research, creating an ironic twist: the very site that helped scientists understand climate change is now at risk of being undone by it.