Bittersweet Infamy - #139 - Invasion of the Iceworm

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Taylor tells Josie about Camp Century, the U.S. military's once-innovative, now-abandoned science base in northwestern Greenland—and how it was merely a cover for Project Iceworm, a top-secret Cold War plan to hide hundreds of nuclear weapons within the Greenland Ice Sheet.

On the top of the world, below the surface of a giant ice cap, a city is buried. Today on the island of Greenland, as part of man's continuing efforts to master the secrets of survival in the Arctic, the United States Army has established an unprecedented nuclear-powered Arctic research center. Located in a wilderness of ice and snow, Camp Century is 150 miles from Tully, its nearest base of supply. This is an ideal Arctic laboratory. For more than 90% of Greenland is permanently frozen under a polar ice cap which covers all but a few coastal areas of the island. Camp Century is buried below the surface of this ice cap.

Beneath it, the ice descends for 6,000 feet. In this remote setting, less than 800 miles from the North Pole, Camp Century is a symbol of man's unceasing struggle to conquer his environment. to increase his ability to live and fight if necessary under polar conditions. This is the story of Camp Century, the city under ice. Welcome to Bitter-Sweet. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in me.

The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. So as we dive into episode 139 now, I want to give a big thank you to all of the listeners who are so patient with the release of our last episode, number 138. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 about the roots of monopoly, the popular American board game about making a bunch of money and screwing over your friends, or is it? Well put. Thank you. Thank you, Josie. If you had to give the listeners one fun.

fact from that episode to kind of entice them to go back and listen to it if they haven't already. Taylor cheats at Monopoly. Yeah. Yeah. And what about it? And fucking arrest me. I'll just buy my way. I'll be out of jail in three turns, bitch.

Enjoy. That's why you should listen to the episode. Yeah, listen. This is what you get. There you go. There you go. So go back and listen to that one. But thank you so much for your patience.

Rui was here for Valentine's Day, which is really, really nice. Roewee, friend of the podcast. When it comes to a release schedule for season six, the world's kind of fallen apart around us and we're trying to have jobs and do a podcast. So I would say for our release schedule, we're still going to shoot for every other Sunday just because it's a nice thing to shoot for. But please bear with us and probably expect that there may be occasional delays. However, when this happens, we will update the episode description with an idea of when you can expect.

The episode and fat updates will update it in the description. And I feel like we're pretty good for two episodes a month. Yeah. Don't think that we're going to drop away from getting you the goods, from the quantity and the quality. But we just want to maintain the quality. That's what it is. It's maintaining the quality. And I think that like the realities of our lives look a lot different than they did, you know, in 2020 when we started this room.

In November 2020, when we, or October 2020, we kind of recorded November 2020. We were a lot of inside. We were heavy inside cats at the time. Now sometimes we have to go outside. Yeah, yeah. And that's okay. That's where the stories come from. Outside.

Yeah. We're just out there getting more stories. That's all. What is nice about that, though, is that I got to spend time with the Rui while they were in town. So this is my partner turned ex-partner turned partner again, who I cried over at an airport for no good reason, as though they were going to New Zealand forever. And then that didn't happen. But now they're back, which is great.

They're living in Mexico with the fam, but came up during Valentine's. season and we went to the aquarium, which was nice. Ooh, Stanley Park Aquarium. Stanley Park Aquarium, kind of a nice, iconic Vancouver landmark, although one that was recently purchased by the Americans, you know, because we ran out of money during COVID or something like this. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay.

You didn't do it. We have an axolotel exhibit around, although I will say the axelotles were few and pretty depressed seeming. They didn't, I think that they had a bit of sensory overwhelm. as did I. It was, I didn't count on the fact that it was the aquarium on like a long weekend. So lots of kids. Lots of screaming, lots of sneezing. You know, maybe not the most romantic of Valentine's spots, perhaps. Well, depending on the year. If it fell in a weekday, we'd be having a different conversation.

The cold ballet of the belugas swimming. It was nice. Where were you? You should have been narrating that date. We would have been fucking right there next to the belugas. As I narrated. Yeah. Making whale noises. Ooh. Oh. Dolphin.

But how about you? You had some house guests and visitors of your own. Yes. I had my mom come to Texas. We drove to Austin to meet up with her. And we saw a play for her birthday that she really wanted to see. Oh, I love a play. I haven't been to the theater in a really long time.

And it was really nice. Yeah, I always have that when I go back and watch something. Even if it's not like the most of me. piece of theater I've ever had in my life. There is something really like, folks, go to the theater. Turn off this podcast. We'll do okay without the ad revenue for a moment. Come right back after you go to the theater.

But go to the theater. Watch something live. It's a special thing. And my mom really wanted to see Susie Eddie Izard. It was Hamlet. It was a rendition of Hamlet. What about this person, this performer, can you tell the class? Who may not have heard of her?

Yes. So she is a long time comedian. She got her start at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And since then, she's done a lot of feature film acting. I knew her best through stand-up. She does really great stand-up routines. And my mom really got into them, like, years ago when I was a kid. And she is a fascinating person. She, like, ran for local council in England.

She also, speaking of running, is known for running. multiple marathons, like day after day, marathon, marathon, marathon? I had no idea. Yeah, she's a really fascinating person. And part of what makes her so interesting is even in the early 80s when she was kind of getting going as a performer, she went by Eddie Izard. Right, which she's retained as part of her professional name and as expressed that she doesn't mind if people use, although she prefers to go by Susie.

She identified at that time as transvestite. She was always kind of like gender bending. Which is someone who is like a cross-dresser as opposed to someone who is like transgender sees themselves as another gender. Although like all of these words have changed and evolved over the years and we wouldn't have used like a word that's in relative wide use right now like transgender, we wouldn't have really used in the 20th century as broadly. And I think for Susie, she's done a lot of speaking out about it. For a long time she identified very strongly with the term transvestite. But then as things changed and as she changed as a person, now she, uh,

identifies as Susie as a queer woman. And I didn't anticipate this as part of the performance, but it was so cool to see, well, I should say, the play that we saw was a one-person rendition of Hamlet. It was the entire play of Hamlet done by Susie Eddie Izard. And I was like, how is this going to work? Like, she can't like jump from one character to the next and, you know, like, bop, bop, bop, like, try and do that.

But it was so smooth and so subtle, the way that she moved. from one character to another that there was never any confusion about who was speaking and where the plot was going. Oh, interesting. It was really cool. And at first it was like, wow, this is just amazing that she memorized all of this. Okay. And I'm following along. And then by the second half, like, you're so into it and you're so just like enthralled that like it doesn't matter. It's just story coming at you. And it's interesting. That's skill. That's a lot of skill. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The two like almost kind of comedic characters in this tragedy, because they always appear together.

She had them as like little hand puppets. That's cute. That sounds like a really engaging theater experience. Yeah, she wanted to do for her 75th birthday. So that's what we did. Happy birthday. And she came back to Houston with us and stayed with us for a few days. And then two weekends after that, my best friend Chelsea came and stayed with us.

She helped me build a cationo for a new cat. Right. Right. That's fun. Tell me about the cateo. Sorry, Chelsea Rose. You got upstaged. So there's like a little part of the cadiot that it's like a little private little box for the cat. And we went ahead and we put up some like posters and like little lights and stuff. So P.K. has her own little like catio studio hangout. Catcave kind of vibe. Cat cave. I like cat cave. Yeah, Josie has a, Josie has a cat. Yeah, a cat who shouldn't really go outside. So that's a cat cave. where we got a cateo.

Well, I'm glad that your cat has a chill space to be his, her best self. Thank you. And all my best to Chelsea. And how nice that we got to enjoy the company of our friends for a little while. I love it. Lately over at our coffee account, Josie, what's the URL for that? Test pop quiz. K-O-S-F-I dot C-O-M-S-Sash, Bittersweet Infamy.

You got it. Yes. You're going to want to join us. as a monthly subscriber over there. I think it's like three bucks a month. And if you join us, you can become a member of the Bittersweet Film Club.

We're soliciting to anyone out there who's listening. We're soliciting suggestions for movies that we can or should watch during the season of Bittersweet Film Club, which is a video podcast that we release with Josie's husband Mitchell about once a month. That's another thing that sort of has

become on the schedule that it's on, but we shoot for once a month. And it's just a chance for us to chat about films that have either some sort of infamous connection, some sort of depiction of infamy, some sort of true story that they're based on, this sort of thing. Although really it just comes down to what do you want us to watch? And to it, we just watched Working Girl because we wanted to and because Terry McAntole was too. And now for February, we're going to be watching Notes on a scandal. Yeah, my behest, this was a Taylor Pick. I'm excited. I haven't rewatched it yet,

but I've watched it many times and I've read the book, I think, twice. And it's a lot of fun. It's a story that I just think is a lot of fun. It has Oscar nominated performances from both of its female leads. It's a good movie. Dame Judy Dench, my baby. Dame Judy Dench feeling a lot of big feelings for Kate Banchette. Big, big, big feelings. I mean, who among us? Sometimes when we have these big feelings, we don't know what to do with them and it can be so frustrating. Do we implode inwards? Do we explode outwards? This is the endless human struggle that Dame Judy Dench feels while emotionally blackmailing her friend. And I think that that is very relatable to all of us.

That's what the Bittersweet Film Club is all about, really. The universal human struggle, as depicted in cinema. And we watched it like Waterworld, too. And we watched a battlefield earth. You know what I mean? So it's real out there shit, too. Yeah. Yeah.

We stop at nothing for the human condition committed to celluloid. And then we decide if we like it or not. Yeah. And then in the end, we say, was it bittersweet or bittersweet? and, you know, you at home can vote along to over at k-o-hyphen-fi.com slash bittersweet infamy. Thanks for supporting us. We really, we really appreciate it.

It's really nice. Thanks. Chelsea also cut the dog's hair. I say it with so much gratitude because you really need. It was just like, oh my gosh, he came all the way here to like build a cadio and groom our dog. Yeah, no, that's how. Rui did the same for me, honestly. Rui, like, did my laundry.

Rui did my bathtub. Like, come on, you know what I mean? And I always am like, dude, that's not necessary. You know what I mean? But that's how some people should love. Yeah. Not me. Couldn't be me.

But I do, like, I'm very, like, I've helped people move in the piss and rain. Yeah, no, you do. You do plenty. It's just everybody does it a little differently, you know? Don't expect me to come and clean your tub, Josie. I'm just saying. Well, lucky for you, I don't have a tub. Only shower.

But you, it would be great if you could come and clean it because it's a real bitch to clean. all these tiny tiles, so much grout. It's horrible. Well, let me take you away from all that grout. Josie, I got a story for you. I'm so excited. You know, make my motherfucking day. Today's story brings us to northwestern Greenland. Okay. A subject of, I've expressed many times in the past on this podcast. Have I not? How do I, what is my stance on Greenland?

Leave them alone. Leave them alone. Yeah, bury that. Very that. I just meant generally like, I am pro-Greenland, but yes, fuck yes, leave them alone. Please leave them alone. And today, by the way, to tip my hand very early, today is a big leave Greenland alone piece. Okay. Okay. What do you know about Greenland as far as like the shape and geography of it? Really fucking big. Most of it is covered in ice. It hangs out in the North Atlantic. Arctic Circle. Yeah, so far north that like is actually quite close to North America up there, because everything just gets a little tight. I think it's like 147 kilometers in waterway in a straight between Canada Island and Greenland Island.

Yeah. So it's all pretty cozy up there. Most of the inhabitants are in the south of Greenland. Yeah, and on the coast. And like, because the middle part, nope. We're not going to mess with that. We're doing that. And I'm remembering the story of. the big apartment complex. Yeah, there was a large apartment complex called Block P that was very infamously built to house. It ends up housing something like an entire percent of Greenland's population because this is not like a super densely populated piece of land by any means. And it just sort of became iconic as this sort of like colonialist ghetto that was sort of like built completely ignorantly of the actual needs of the people that live there, e.g. We need a place to drain our

catch. We are fishing. We are hunting. We need some place other than the bathtub to drain the blood out of this thing, you know, that kind of thing. And it ends up just kind of falling into disrepute, becoming infamously depressing and getting shut down and destroyed. Think of being a house guest and cleaning that tub. That's a lot. There you go. There you see. It could always be worse. And it's so cold because it's Greenland. It could be a lot worse. Did you have anything else that you think of Greenland in the context of? I always have to kind of reverse it so that Iceland is actually quite green and Greenland is quite icy.

I think this is the struggle people have. Yeah. You're like, oh, it's probably all green and really, wow, because it's Greenland, but it's not as all ice. And Iceland, while there's ice, of course, it's comparatively kind of green. Greenland, fun fact, I believe it is the only country in the world whose national sport is football to say soccer what we in north america typically called soccer it's the only country whose national sport is soccer that doesn't naturally grow grass at all the grass in greenland is artificial

because we just don't grow grass here whoa oh wow ain't no grass in greenland except well like i'm sure that there's some grass or something like grass somewhere on greenland but like not we don't have football pitches outdoor football pitches occurring naturally let's say what a fun fun fact I have a lot of fun facts. And to wit, today's story actually takes us to Northwest Greenland. So this is like, if you imagine Greenland as roughly being the shape of a chicken tender held vertically, right? Okay. Take a look and tell me I'm wrong.

We're sort of up near the tippy top left of the tender, you know, as seen on a map. The northwest, you know how some chicken tenders kind of look like Africa, which is maybe where I should have gone with, like, I should just cut out the chicken tender. and gone right to the shape of Africa. It's not a perfect match. But sort of the cave. You know what I mean? The Western Cape of Africa. But Greenland, it's ice, it's snow.

It's in the Arctic fucking circle jersey. I needed the chicken tendi. I needed it. I, that's the only way I can see it. Thank you. Yeah. That rough post line is equivalent to the fry, the batter. The breading.

Understood, yes. So right nearby, the place where this takes place is a city called Kanaq. Okay. Q-A-A-Q-A-Q. It is the world's second most northerly town. It is the world's most northerly palindrome. Amen. Fun fact about fucking Greenland.

Okay. This is where we are. We're some kilometers away from the settlement of Kanak, but we're in a place that's a lot more desolate. I want you to imagine, too, that this is an area where the sun doesn't make it above the horizon for three and a half months of the year. And then it never sets for the entire summer. Yeah. Midnight sun for like five months. Yeah, baby.

But it's also the thing that like, even on a bright, beautiful day, it can just turn into a crazy whiteout blizzard where you can't even orient yourself. And it's really, really dangerous. And that's sort of the case as we drop into our story here. I want you to imagine it's minus 50. What? Yeah, it's minus 50. And it doesn't matter Fahrenheit or Celsius because they all just kind of like hit the same point when they get that low. Yeah.

That's insane. Like even 50 degrees, like at least 1st5. Fahrenheit is kind of chilly to me. So negative that? Yeah. Fuck that. Fuck that. Oh. Yeah. You're feeling every, every iota, that storm that wind blowing in your face. Thankfully, your military guides are there to usher you toward what really just seems like a small, nondescript patch enough for you to open and see that there's like a ladder to climb down. Okay. Before anything, you are grateful to be inside. It is not any fair shakes inside of as far as like temperature, but it is not minus 50.

And that's the first thing kind of that you think of independent of like where you're actually going. But you do get to where you're actually going. I want you to imagine, Josie, sort of a living quarters, an underground living quarter. Underground isn't the right word because this has been carved into the ice. Into the permafrost, probably, right? Into the ice shelf. Okay, okay.

Like we are going through pure ice and we've set up, let's say that there's a, a, a some prefab housing that has been set up inside these tunnels. Oh, okay, okay. There is a living quarters with all of the mid-century accoutrements in this sort of like maze of, there's one big ice tunnel down the middle with all the icy walls that you can imagine, and then you can kind of go off into like little individual tunnels. Whoa. One of them you see is actually a library, well-stocked little small library.

What kind of books are there? Cold ones Sure. What's a cold? Let's come up with one. Of ice and men. Of ice and men. You peek down another little tunnel and you see an infirmary. Josie, what kind of things do you imagine are in the little first aid room in this ice tunnel? I imagine some band-aids, classic. But also maybe like he, heating pad. Ooh, yeah. The trick back. Yeah, like a little more focused on like heating. So maybe even like tubs for heating people up in warm water in case they get caught in the cold.

All premised around the idea of like, fuck, it must be cold. Yes, yes, exactly. And some band-a-and-is. And some band-a-and-is, yeah, yeah. So we're covered in all directions. Uh-huh, yeah. Another tunnel you see a kind of like a, you know, 1950s, 60s, looking billiard room. What are you seeing in this billiard room in your head? In my head, I'm

picturing all the walls are like ice. So it's all just like blue and icy. But you said it was prefab. So is it like a proper kind of hallway vibe? It's both. It's both. When you're in a tunnel, it tends to be quite icy when you're in a little prefab thing. Like whenever I'm describing a particular room, it's probably in a little prefab thing. In the billiards prefab, I'm imagining a billiards table with like a cool light over it. To be honest, it's probably kind of like fluorescent lighting because it's like that's the easiest and cheapest to do in these uh you don't think we're going for like a chandelier in this uh snow tunnel thing i mean maybe that's a thing for the billiards room there might be one of those like game lights that's like the stained glass like pizza hut style yeah i love

that yes yeah yeah yeah and so that's like a little texia class in that one you know i can tell you it's the non classy one i can tell you it's the kind of more like we're clearly doing purpose built in the ice for some reason then let's not go overboard. It's definitely that one. Okay, okay. But I bet that room is kind of fun, kind of cool, kind of good times. And another thing that you'll see in this place, whatever it is, is you'll see all kinds of

fascinating science equipment, large generator over here, big intimidating steel thing over here, big piece of heavy machinery over here. Okay. Josie, this is Camp Century, unveiled in 1960 and carved with specialized equipment into the ancient Greenlandic ice shelf by the U.S. military. I was built to accommodate. Oh, shit. Okay.

This is fucking some young radical has stormed the stage and taken the mic to deliver a political message. She rips open her shirt for another shirt. So save Greenland. Yeah. Leave them alone. Leave Greenland alone. Built to accommodate about 200 plus military personnel and scientists.

Damn. Empowered notably by its. own portable experimental nuclear reactor. Oh, those are two words you never want, or three words, I suppose. Experimental nuclear portable. Yeah, none of that. Camp Century will usher in a new American frontier in the Arctic. So the way that we just imagined it, what we saw in our mind's eye, was Camp Century in its

heyday in 1960. Okay, okay. I want you to imagine it now, as it might currently exist in 2026. The ice walls have all but completely reclaimed the space. Fuck yeah. The tunnels have shrunken inwards by feet and some have collapsed entirely. The rooms have warped. Beds have splintered.

The cabinets lean inward. The billiard table is inconsolable. That fancy stained glass light you were envisaging smashed to pieces. All those copies of ice and men scattered to the floor. Camp Century has been abandoned. left in permanent deep freeze within the ice shelf. And when the military abandoned it, they also abandoned tons of sewage and nuclear waste buried deep within the ice.

I was wondering where does one shit in the ice, but I guess I'm... In the ice. Yeah. In the ice. In the ice. Yeah. Only now the ice cap is melting. And we've got a century or two before all of those toxic pollutants.

rise to the surface and drift into the bay. And if that's not bad enough, Camp Century itself, with all its feel-good PR, was merely a cover story for a chilling Cold War scheme. Project Ice Worm. Ew. An elaborate plan devised by the U.S. military to secrete hundreds of nuclear bombs

in a network of tunnels carved into hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the Greenlandic ice shelf. Oh my God. This is stupidest idea I've ever heard. Josie, let me tell you a story of the American infiltration of Greenland that mirrors some aspects of today's climate. Let me tell you about the creation, impacts, and legacy of Camp Century, aka Project Iceworm. I decided early on that I was going to do a voice. Yeah, no, I think it's appropriate. It's only appropriate, yeah.

Have you ever heard of this? I have never heard of this, no. It is very in line with the Greenland shit of today in a way that, you know, because Trump's version of it, the way it's been posed, it kind of seems like such an aberration. But it really is in keeping with just American military bullying of these people and this land for, you know, half a century at least. So I want to shout out the book, Camp Century, Colon, the Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base under the Greenland Ice. Nice good colon, you know, lopsided, lopsided length of the subtitle, long involves some title with like three nouns.

We love it. Small intestine, colon, large intestine. Yes, large intestine. That's the order. Exactly. And this is by two Danish academics named Christian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen. I'm not sure if there's any relation there, but there you go. So if I refer to the Nielsen and Nielsen book or the Nielsen's I'm talking about this book, which is, I gather it's sort of like the academic book on this subject. It was published first in Danish since been translated to English, and it sort of encapsulates the story of Camp Century.

slash project iceworm and all that surrounds it. Purchar Iceworm. Who comes up with these names? US military. Get somebody from OPI, naming those nail polishes, get them in the Pentagon, and rethink this. This is part of it.

It is what it says in the tin. We're burying under the ice. Okay. But do you want your project name to be what it says on the tin? Maybe you just want Operation Orange, right? Yes. That sounds great, yeah. It brings to mind a lot of that imagery.

A lot of, I specifically saw it mentioned as like early, James Bond imagery. You can imagine a gunfight happening in some tunnels that Blowfeld has like carved into the North Pole or something like this. And the ice is reflective and so it's like bright and shiny and cold and sterile and bouncing bullets. Yeah, it has that. I want to give you a little bit of an update on what's happening today in Greenland,

but in order for the context of that, I'm going to do a little bit of table setting as I do. The quick and dirty when wears who's of Greenland over the past, I don't know, a couple thousand years. We'll make it quick. We'll go real quick. Tell me which fork to use. Just that's all I need. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Greenland is smack dab in the middle of the Arctic Ocean midway between North America and Europe. Critically in our context, you know, 20th century context and 21st century now context, midway between Washington, D.C. and Moscow. Oh, see, I didn't know that. Wow. As in like, if you were trying to fly a nuke somewhere, you would need to stop in Greenland to fuel up kind of thing. If, say, somebody.

wanted to do that. If someone, not saying, I'm just asking for, I love to just know the rules. Yeah. Man, I just want to know, should the eventuality come up? Yeah. Am I able to refuel my nuke here? Which is ironic because the name of the Greenlandic capital is nuke, right? And you, UK. So that's the nuke that we want to preserve and support, not these other nukes. It's true. The world's largest non-continental island, it spans almost 2400 kilometers, 1,500 miles from north to south. it is covered by an ancient ice sheet, three kilometers thick, that is difficult and unsafe to traverse with its major cities largely unconnected by roads. And major cities is doing some heavy lifting here. Nuke is by far the biggest 19,000 in kind of the south.

Yeah. But otherwise we're kind of just talking towns, settlements, these sorts of things. Yeah. And probably a large part of that is there is no central network to connect all of them. So. Yeah, yeah. There's not like it roads, you know. Yeah.

There's dog sleds. Oh, that's fun. There's planes. Go for it, little guy. These are harsh comments. You like minus 50, Batman? I don't. He is a little heater.

I feel like he would be useful if he's like tucked in your like, he's the coal. He's the seal skin jacket. And then he's just like in there like adding even more warmth. So he'd survive on his cuteness alone. Greenland has been the. of some of humanity's most impressive scientific and historic discoveries, including human remains from 4,000 years ago.

They found two million-year-old preserved DNA. Disgusting. So old. Ew. Yeah, someone spit into a handkerchief and dropped it in a nice flow. You know what I mean? And now here we are. I don't think that's a joke. Listeners at home, that's a joke.

That's not how that happens. No, no, no. Greenland is also the home of the 58 million-year-old Hiawatha impact crater. So like some celestial debris hit this thing 58 million years ago and left this big crater. Oh, cool. Greenland's oldest known inhabitants arrived about 4,500 years ago. So again, keeping it nice and tight this time. Yeah, yeah. They died off and were replaced by subsequent groups, including the Norse Greenlanders in 982, who were killed off by a cold snap called The Little Ice Age. And then it was settled by the Tule, who were the predecessors of today's Inuit, who arrived in Greenland

in the 13th century via what is now Canada. Hey, hey. About 90% of Greenlanders today are Inuit, including the Khalalit, the Tunumit, and the Inukuit. In the 1700s, the Danes of Denmark arrived to spread Christianity to any leftover North Greenlanders who might still be on the island and have backslidden into that pesky paganism. The Norse Greenlanders were dead, but the Inuit were there, so the Danes just decide to baptize them instead. Hey, why don't we take over the place while we're here?

That story. And that's how it's been ever since with Denmark claiming Greenland as part of its kingdom and exercising various degrees of control over it in these centuries that have elapsed. The relationship between Greenland and Denmark has been colored with a lot of familiar tragedies of European colonization of indigenous peoples. Cultural genocide, forced dissimulation, introduction of alcohol, disruption of traditional ways of life, stealing of resources, the classic suite of colonialism. General bummer.

Seller colonial bummer, yeah. says Colette Boulanger for Liberation News. In 1953, the island was upgraded from colonial possession to Danish province. On one hand, this gave Greenlanders Danish citizenship. On the other, it marked the beginning of an intense period of cultural extermination. Danish was the only permitted language for use on the island. And Greenlanders wanting post-secondary education were forced to go to Denmark for it. Oh, gosh.

Extinction of language is a such a gross way to go about it. And so textbook, right? Yeah. The impacts of these traumas. have resulted in Greenland having some of the world's worst rates of alcoholism and suicidality, unfortunately. However, Greenland has gradually reclaimed more independence and power. As of 2009, Greenland is a self-governing territory with its own legislative bodies and representation in the Danish Parliament. Greenlandic is now the national language, the lone national language.

Okay. These were hard-won concessions, and so Greenlanders are broadly socialist-leaning nationalist in support of independence and not a population to take kindly to grabby-hamboy. hand imperialists attempting to impose their will from abroad. And when we think grabby hands, who jumps to mind? Oh, you know, uh, Trump. In August 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump first floated his idea of purchasing Greenland, calling the idea, quote, essentially a large real estate deal. Oh, my God. This characterization offended Greenlanders and Danes with Danish Prime Minister Med Frederickson and Greenland Premier Kim Kielsen, insisting Greenland is not for sale. Exactly.

Now in 2026, Trump is back in power and he's even more aggressive in his expansionist rhetoric, threatening to annex Greenland by force. This is in contravention of the NATO pact that has dictated military diplomacy since the end of the Second World War. Exactly. And specifically, it seems to be inspired partially, at least to hear it from Trump himself, by the fact that he wasn't given a Nobel Peace Prize. This is all part of that kind of tantrum. Oh, my God.

He's like, why should I be peaceful? Because you're not going to... What a needy fucking child, dude. And then he was given the prize. He was given a prize. Yes. Yeah. What a knob.

Anyway. Yeah. I hate that Donald Trump compromises my ability to be funny. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But I just don't find him funny. I'm so tired of the whole thing.

No. I fucking shtick of it all. No. And yeah. Yeah. Because the funniness could be that it's so out there. But then he capitalizes on that. He uses that out thereness to like make it happen.

And then that's no longer funny. That's why it's not funny. Yeah. And again, part of my thesis here is to argue that, like, he brings that kind of out there Donald Trump quality to the discussion and to the particular motivations to some degree around it. But my argument is that, like, this is just addressing up of a problem, let's say, that's existed for a while, which is the way that America treats Greenland in ways that

maybe had more finesse than Donald Trump in the past, but we're based on similarly like commodification-y kind of motivations. So? And in some ways, that is like the other layer of frustration I have with the Trumpian years is that some things are actually not that different. Take, for example, foreign policy with Greenland. It gets dressed up in a neoliberalism by previous presidents. And then we get a nice little song and dance and somebody, you know, gets to watch the cultural dance. Because Obama wouldn't tell the Danes to fuck off to their face kind of thing.

Yeah. Trump will because he's a baby. Yes, exactly. But it's the same shit. It's the same shit. So you go and you complain about Trump doing it. it for being a huge ass baby. And then he's like, well, everybody else is doing it.

I'm just doing it like full voiced, full-throated. And it's like, well, fuck the full throat, but also fuck the other guys too. This, why, why does this excuse your behavior? Leave Greenland alone. Yeah. Get your fucking shit and nuclear waste out of the ice and then leave your waste, parentheses, nuclear and human out of our ice shelf. In any case, the relationship between.

between Denmark and the U.S. is in Tatters, and in Greenland, the viral phrase is, mega, make America go away. Yeah. And lest we pin the blame on all of America, a U-Gov poll from January 2026, so a month ago as of recording, showed that a whopping 8% of Americans supported a military invasion of Greenland with 73% explicitly opposed. And then the poll asked, where is Greenland? And only 40%.

They were like, is that the one that's greener that has the ice? Trump's obsession with Greenland is often written off as one of his peculiar hyperfixations a la Windmills, Rosie O'Donnell. Yeah. The out there kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Cookey.

Oh, he's fucking, he's bullying in Greenland. What a crazy guy. A closer look, though, at America's foreign policy shows that it keeps to a pattern of gradual American infiltration of Greenland that stretches back to the late 19th century. So in 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward unsuccessfully attempts to persuade U.S. Congress to press. purchase Greenland alongside. Alaska.

Good job. You notably do know Seward, so I was hoping that you'd be gung over that task. Yeah, me and Seward, we go way back. Seward's report notes Greenland's abundant resources, such as coal and fish, and I'm shortening it for time, but he goes on for like 90 different items and animals and shit of all the abundance and opportunity in Greenland. His plan is rejected, but the American hunger for this territory never truly departs. I mean, what American hunger has ever been satiated, you know? He also was looking at Iceland and Canada around this time, so very much like, yeah. And expand North thought in Alaska is the one that kind of stuck. And even then, I think

that the wisdom of the purchase wouldn't be revealed for some years down the line. It's like, Seward just kind of ran hot and he's like, I really like the cold environment. Can we just like get a little bit more of that going, you know? I'm sick of sticking one foot out of the covers when I have to go to bed at night. Exactly. I understand. I hate a hot pillow. Let's just... Can we buy Iceland? Thank you. Bye, Greenland. Let's buy Iceland and Greenland. I don't remember which one has the ice. Let's just get both to be sure. Iceland says ice. So maybe that one first. Let's try that.

Yeah. In 1917, Denmark sells the Caribbean islands, the Danish West Indies to the U.S. for $25 million and, crucially, American acknowledgement of the Danish claim to Greenland. Oh, okay. Sorry, and what year was that? 19. 17. So what do you know about 1917? World War I. Bingo. So why does America need the Danish West Indies strategy reasons to do with the Panama Canal and kind of cutting off Germany at the past and so. Ah, okay, okay, okay, okay. And these islands become the U.S. Virgin Islands. Gotcha. Notably, you might find their little St. James, a private island, also known as Epstein's Island. And I understand. stand that our boy Donald Trump, very familiar with the local environs there. Fucking islands.

Chelsea and I... Not you, Greenland, not you Greenland. No, actually, this was weirdly in line. Chelsea was showing me, she's using this app to help work it to sleep because she struggles with that. And it plays music. It plays like soundscapes. And some of them were islands.

And she was like, I can't do islands, though, because of Epstein stuff. I just, I don't like it. Oh, Jesus. And I was like, well, what about a cold island? She's like, you know, I haven't thought about that. Yeah, like an icy situation. Yes. And then get a little like foghorn in the background, lapping cold water, seagull.

Yeah, we're going to want some of that action for her in this story. Like that's the, like, imagine that sonic vibe. Yes, yes, yes. We're trying to get that Arctic vibe instead of that Caribbean St. James vibe. So that's like a World War I incidents of Denmark kind of selling its territory to America. And I don't mean to say that flippantly because if you're the people who live, live there. Oh, great. Now the ownership has changed. It's like, like, we don't even get to control the space that we live, the land that we live on, the resources that we live on, because we're being

used as a bargaining chip among colonial powers who want, like, to use us for military reasons, right? Everything to do with this kind of story. And it also has to do with this story in that in World War II, Nazi Germany occupied Denmark. Okay. That's right. Yeah. And they needed to ensure that the Nazis would not also come and occupy Greenland, which, again, is this place of tremendous strategic value militarily in every conceivable way. And apparently resources, according to Seward. Yeah. The Danish ambassador in Greenland, who's effectively like, he's not living in exile, but it's like a similar arrangement where like, because everyone in the mothership has been

kind of taken over here. Yeah. So the Danish ambassador in Greenland, Heinrich Kaufman, signs an agreement, sort of like, what's it called? Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness kind of thing. Hmm. He signs an agreement that the U.S. will be responsible for the military defense of Greenland, which is like an oversimplification. But it gives Greenland American protection from the seemingly imminent Nazis. Right. Yeah.

Now you may be asking, did the Nazis ever make it to Greenland? The answer is yes in a sort of minor way that nonetheless sounds really interesting to me. and I wish that there was like a Chris Pratt action movie about it maybe. Ooh. The Nazis made it over to the east side of Greenland and they set up some like kind of little weather stations and the Americans kind of found them and captured or I don't if they found them and captured them or kicked them out or whatever, but they got discovered and that sort of was the end of that. But the way that I sort of imagine it in this kind of like film treatment in my head is like

Nazis living in ice caves. You know what I mean? Okay. And then like the kind of your Chris Pratt, American military jawline type coming and just like punch him in the face. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. They smack into the ice it cracks.

Nazi ice caves. And again, sort of this very James Bond imagery or Indiana Jones imagery or something, right? Nazi ice caves. Sadly, to my knowledge, there weren't actually any Nazi ice caves. A girl can dream. Never say never. I mean, it's good. To be clear, it's good that there were no Nazi ice caves.

Let's be clear with fucking Shannon Doherty on this one. Always good. Set your boundaries. So in 1946, the U.S. Weather Bureau sets up a presence in Northern Greenland to monitor the climate. Uh-huh. Monitor the climate. They are. Like, all of the science that is used in some degree as a cover story is also like a very opportune cover story because it is all legit. These are things that we are interested to know, not least because they can help us militarily. Yeah. The data from those Greenland weather stations helps the Allies plan D-Day. Oh, shit. Okay,

yeah. Yeah, there we go. In 1947, no less than Time magazine publishes an article called Deep Freeze Defense. Glad you used the voice. It's my Cold War action thriller Nazi Ice Cave voice. Yeah. That's the voice. Yeah. This article makes the case that it is necessary for the U.S. to acquire Greenland for reasons of military strategies, which is exactly what Donald Trump says. Yeah.

By this point, the U.S. has actually already secretly offered to buy Greenland for $100 million. Okay. But they have been denied. Denmark said, we like you, but we don't like you that much. Yeah. That's a lot of land. I guess fork over. Later in 1947, the term Cold War, based on a piece of vernacular by Orwell, who

George Orwell, the author who always had good vernacular, is applied to the Soviet-American relationship for the first time by American financier and political consultant Bernard Baruch to describe the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II. Where two years post the atomic bombing of Hiroshima Nagasaki, the expectation is that the world's superpowers will be exchanging nukes fast and furious. This makes good. Greenland and its position between the two superpowers very strategically valuable. Yeah. In 1949, Greenland formally comes under the protection of the International Military Alliance

NATO. Josie, do you have any NATO knowledge that you want to drop on the group? It was an important alliance post-World War II to kind of secure global safety so that another World War wouldn't be coming down the pike anytime soon. If you have one and then you have two, you really don't want a three. Godfather Three is sort of held to be the worst one. and I don't know them well enough to comment. Right.

Yeah, yeah. The third is never, never that great. Mm. But just an important facet of alliance building in order to protect everybody on the world. Right, right. If you fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us, and we're not going to fuck with each other. Exactly. So don't fuck with us.

Which is why the Trump shit now is seen as so outrageous, because not only is he just aggressing a random country, but it's also one that he is in, like, one of the most high-profile alliances in the world that this is in contravention of. That the whole strength of the alliance is that we don't fuck with each other. We always stand behind each other. And if you're going to fucking ruin this for one of us, you ruin it for all of us. So stop fucking doing this kind of thing. Leave Greenland alone.

Exactly. In 1951, the U.S. builds a major airbase in far-flung Tully in Northwest Greenland, with the plan of using it as a key military base for aircraft, which could potentially carry nuclear weapons. This is the Tully Air Base. lately renamed the BDUfeek Space Base. It got transferred over to the Space Force if we want to talk Donald Trump innovations. Fun.

And if that name BDUfeek Space Base is faintly familiar to you or the listener, it was recently in the news when base commander Colonel Susanna Myers was fired for opposing Donald Trump's threats to annex Greenland. Oh, okay. When they built Tully Air Base, they ended up moving two particular settlements to Kanaq, which is this palindrome that I was telling you about. Yeah, the most northern palindrome. When Tully Air Base is getting built, this is.

is around the time that Kanaq kind of gets built up relatively large by Greenland standards, by which I mean 646 people as of 2020. Whoa. That means that because of the way that this was built and the time that it's like one of the newer cities, it's the only city in Greenland that has the houses and streets in like rows. Oh. Everything else is kind of just built into like the shape of the inlet, the shape of the

rocks on which we post ourselves. Okay. etc. Whereas this seems to have had like a bit of planning, which makes sense because it was probably part of a military effort to set up this town. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be clear this is like a forced relocation. This is not like, hey guys. Gosh, do you want to go kind of live over there? Yeah. It's like we are building an air base here, so you go over there kind of thing. Yeah. So it's another way again in which sort of like the American arm has been a colonizing force in Greenland. Yeah. Shortly after Tully Air Base is finished, nuclear deterrence becomes the governing policy

of the American military. In very brief, let's make sure we have such a big, strong nuclear stockpile that no one will fuck with us ever. Yeah. This was the prevailing logic of the time based on every imaginable nuclear test scenario, which showed that any use of nuclear weapons would end in every participant being obliterated. We realized really quick that once the nukes start flying, you can't unfly the nukes. You should be really careful with them.

A lot of bubble wrap. Yeah. going to want to pay for the secure shipping on those for sure. Get the tracking. It's worth the extra money. You're going to think it's not worth it. Pay for the Apple insurance. You know what I mean?

Yeah. On those bad boys. Totally. And indeed, once it gets back to Moscow that the U.S. has set up the Tully base as a gas up point for hypothetical nuclear bombers, Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Bulgaden threatens Danish Prime Minister Hans Christian H.C. Hans-Hansson, that the granting of bases to a foreign state is tantamount to suicide in case atomic war breaks out. In other words, if you help America nuke us, when we're addressing the reciprocal nuke

on that bubble wrap that we were making the nice get in the express package, if Washington is number one, Copenhagen is going to be 1A. Yeah. So just do with that what you want. Okay? Bezos. Here's some vodka. If they're feeling the squeeze from Mother Russia, Denmark is about to get a firm nudge

from Uncle Sam on the other side. A U.S. ambassador approaches Denmark in 1957 with an off-the-record request. Oh. Can we install some munitions of a special kind at Tully? Not saying what kind. Yeah. Just some old warheads we got lying around. Gumball machines.

No big deal. Pachinko. We love Pachinko. Some office chairs, the roly kind. They're really easy to get in and out. We can do those, yeah. So to be, you know, extra, extra clear, these are nukes. We're talking nukes.

Even in this kind of like bizarre off the record note, we have to be so fucking careful about what we're saying and how we're saying it. And to wit, in an equally secretive and vague response, H.C. Hansen replies, I do not think your remarks give rise to any comments from my side. So it's sort of like we never had this conversation. Yeah. My comment is no comment. Because if it ever comes out that we have this conversation, my comment needs to be no comment.

Yeah. And so the reason that his comment needs to be no comment, why all the cloak and dagger, right? What Hansen is tacitly allowing goes against official Danish policy not to have nuclear weapons in Denmark at peacetime. Ah, okay. As dictated by the Danish people, as dictated by Danish law, as dictated like everyone is in agreement that we don't want nuclear weapons in the country when it's not nuke time. Yeah. And so H.C. Hansen should, for him to do this in a way that keeps the arrangement at Tullier-based secret from the Danish public, when it comes to light later on in the story it will be seen as quite outrageous. So in between threatening letters to Denmark, the USSR accomplishes the first ever intercontinental

missile tests. It sends the first satellite into orbit, Sputnik. Lyca the dog goes into space around this time. Beaman, don't listen. It's also of note, this is right around the time that the worst of like kind of the new, the 20th century colonialism of Greenlanders by the Danish mothership, a lot of that is kind of going down in Greenland right around this time too. But it's specifically the Cold War accomplishment type stuff that lights a fire under the U.S. regarding its own scientific advances. And in 1958, America takes its first steps toward inland expansion in Greenland. They choose an area 138 miles, 222 kilometers from the coast. For their new project, a sprawling complex embedded within the ice sheet, which they dubbed Camp Century. It's 100 somethings

away from something, hence the name. Yeah. I don't remember the unit of measurement or what it's far away from. but it's, that's the hundred. Yeah. That's camp century. And the Danish politicians see the Americans going in and doing this, and they're puzzled by it. They're like, okay, why? What's this about?

Because remember, they haven't had these same conversations around the nuclear question. But even them, that's not the purpose that America is espousing as they go into this. So the part of the project that's Project Iceworm, that all comes out in the 1990s when some documents. get declassified. But prior to this, America's just using this cover story, even in conversations with the Danish and with the Greenlanders, et cetera, they're using this cover story of like, it's just like a military base where we're like studying science for sciences sake. Yeah.

And sort of like just see if we can. Like it's the Cold War. We're very much again in that sort of like James Bond thing of like what would it look like if we needed to build a base on the moon and that sort of, you know, scientific frontier. So this sort of thing where we're like seeing Can the ice shelf withstand heavy weights and can treaded vehicles function on it and all of this type of stuff? Yeah. It makes sense. It's terrifying. Oh, yeah.

Terrifying in what way? Well, it's just, what I am action is like beautiful, pristine land. It's just like, oh, we could get some nukes up there. We could dig a little tunnel. We could play a little pool in the ice. There's just something that's like, it's colonialism. You know, it's the fastidious kind of arrogance of colonialism. that I find shivering.

Yeah, it's disrespectful to the people who live there. It's disrespectful, as you say, sort of to this land. I heard it described as wasteland, but I sort of steered away from that characterization because it's wasteland in the sense that, like, it's not a place where things grow. It's a place of snow and rocks and beautiful snow and rocks and glaciers and fish and all of these things,

but it's just not a place with much vegetation. Go read those nine pages by Seward and see if he, if one of those words is wasteland, I highly doubt it. Sure. Even in desolation, and almost sometimes especially in desolation, there's a beauty, right? Yeah. That is compromised by bringing in your league of construction guys and, you know, people poking

and probing at this untouched ice shelf and so on. Yeah. And it's just because it's a landscape you don't recognize doesn't mean it's not important. So the construction of the camp itself. Okay. Imagine an ant colony of tunnels embedded in the ice, in the ice shelf properly. connected by a central main street tunnel that's about a thousand feet, which is about a third of a kilometer long. Yeah. And quite wide, at least the main tunnel was wide enough to drive heavy

equipment through. They've already tried this general setup out with another area called Camp Fist Clench, which the Nielsen and Nielsen book describes as the world's first documented attempt to build a unified system of residential and storage tunnels in the ice sheet. You like Camp Fist Clench? It's just like fisting the ice. That's all I can imagine right now. You know, I don't like that she said it, but is she wrong? I don't like that she said it out loud. She could have kept that one inside her head, but she's not mistaken. No, no, not today.

Not today. I speak my truth. The tunnel is constructed under the guidance of glaciologist Henri Bader, who did some earlier work on the U.S.'s Greenland projects in the 1940s. So like, hey, come up here, learn the ropes, and now bring that same expertise back. to bear in 1960. Bader brings in tools that were used to tunnel through the Swiss Alps, including a Peter Plough, a snow milling machine that can move 1,200 cubic yards of snow per hour. Wow.

The Peter Plow carves into the ice sheet, 21 tunnels. Like, I have different numbers in here, I think like 20 tunnels, 21 tunnels. Let's go with 21 tunnels. Okay. Which are made level with boards and lined with prefab house material. These prefab houses are supported from the outside and disguised with snow blocks, which stabilize the structures. Oh, okay.

The tunnels themselves are reinforced with steel arches, which then have snow blown over top of them to disguise them. Eventually, the frequent snowstorms of Northern Greenland will render them completely invisible, except for a tiny handful of exits from nondescript hatches, the only parts of the structures that can be seen from above. Whoa. So this shit is, like, hidden. It's a secret.

Shh. And yet it's a secret, but it's not a secret because we can see much of the construction process in a 1963 documentary created by the American Army for the big picture, which is effectively their propaganda television series of the era. This documentary, it's real great. We start the film with a gushing thank you, expressing gratitude to our lovely ally, Denmark, who we love and adore so much. And then we just see just kind of the construction of this place in a way that is very clearly

meant to evoke an image of American strength, competence, perseverance. there is a dog named Muckluck. He's a Siberian husky. He's like a three-month-old puppy. Oh. I looked to see what happened to Muckluck, and I couldn't find out. But he gets sort of like a documentary role as like, you know, and here's Muckluck. He's pitching in two digging this fucking ice hole.

You know, even Muckluckluck is full of the American spirit of blah-bidi-blah. Oh, man. Dogs, they work. It's part of the propaganda, the propaganda, right? The propaganda. We get to see how the Americans built a three-mile, 4.8 kilometer road to the edge of the ice cap and brought their 6,000 tons of supplies and equipment and, as the documentary puts it, even ice cream over these roads on gigantic sleds called heavy

swings. And these heavy swings are 10 to 20 ton vehicles that crawl at a 2 mile an hour, which is 3.2 KM an hour. That pace, they crawl at about 2 miles an hour for 70 hours to get to the location. I would be so frustrated being one of those drivers. I don't think I could do it. Or a passenger, even worse. It's that or get nuked off the planet by the Russians, Josie. What do you want?

I guess just angrily along the ice road. You're going to let Khrushchev win this one? Come on. Yeah. Not our American girl. The narrator of the documentary describes this convoy as being like a wagon train in the Old West. This is a very deliberate piece of imagery of the noble conquest, manifest destiny, variety. Exactly. Yeah. The camp, Camp Century itself, is depicted as spacious, modern, comfortable, and not lacking in any detail. There's a pool table. One detail in which the camp is also not lacking is

the installation of an experimental nuclear reactor, powered by steel bars with uranium embedded inside. So a very like a Homer Simpson approach to nuclear physics. Yeah. The reactor, which becomes operational October 2nd in 1960, is functional, although it is noted that the amount of radiation in the tunnel is unacceptably high, leading the camp to receive lead plates to line the walls. I see we need our plates, like wall plates. Yeah, just, anywhere you see a crack. Whoa. It also means turning down the reactor to turn down the radiation levels, which means

turning down the power, including heat and light. Ooh, in the ice, too. This is not the only such arrangement in the world, the kind of the nuke embedded in the ice shelter kind of vibe. Yeah. For example, across the world, the United States Antarctic base is powered by a similar reactor lovingly called Nooky Pooh. All right.

The scientific discoveries of Camp Century are not insignificant. From the military perspective, the U.S. is actually able to study a lot of relevant things to their Arctic aspirations. What do we do about whiteouts? Traffic ability. How do we get heavy vehicles over the ice? Water supply, directly from the glacier, it turns out. All of these things.

Okay. Experiments. We are launching silver iodide crystals on rockets to seed clouds. Henri Bader tests out. some of the first experiments around the idea of climate change. So we're just now talking about like global warming. What is it? Is it possible that the world is heating up? Maybe if we go to the polar ice caps, we can figure this out.

Henri Bader tests this via ice coring to see whether this is something that had happened in the past. So he drills to the very bottom of the ice sheet and extracts an unbroken core of ice that is 1,390 meters, about 4,560 feet long. How can you like put this somewhere so that it doesn't break? Well, I think they have to section it off. Like, I think they have to break it into sections. This ice goes back 100,000 years. You can see evidence of like specific volcanic eruptions. Like we're literally able to confirm historical hypotheses about like major world weather incidents

and disasters and shit like this because of this ice core that he took. In October of 1960 as a sort of international publicity stunt of goodwill, someone within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contrives the idea that two boy scouts, one from the U.S. and one from Denmark, should spend five months at Camp Century as junior aides, shadowing the crew and learning invaluable life experiences. Why? Kind of makes sense, honestly. Scouting is about being proactive and hearty and ready for anything, Mr. Khrushchev. quoting the Nielsen and Nielsen book, Scouting in the United States was increasingly being seen as part of civilian society contingency planning

in the event of a crisis, with the motto B. prepared taking on a new shade of meaning, and the young scouts guidance and training shifted more toward American patriotism and liberal democratic values. The two Boy Scouts at Camp Century showed the world that mentally and physically young people were willing and able to take part in fighting the enemy to wherever and whenever the need might arise. Okay. In a 1961 episode of the big picture, which is the same sort of like American military docu series that aired that kind of like fluff documentary about Camp Century. Right. They had an episode called the U.S. Army and Boy Scouts in which the Boy Scouts were called one of the few institutions to balance the rather softening effects of our

modern way of life, offering American boys the chance, quote, to develop the initiative, the resourcefulness, the character, the quick thinking, and the leadership they really need in the somewhat jittery, insecure world in which we live. From a PR perspective, too, plays a lot softer than America's secret Arctic nuke tunnel. So great, Boy Scouts in. So who were these young men? In the red, white, and blue corner out of Neodesia, Kansas, it's 18-year-old Eagle Scout and aspiring engineer Kent L. Goring, selected via an extensive application process. And in the red, blue, and white corner from Corsor Denmark, the great Dane himself, Soren Gregerson. Oh. Gregerson plans on studying nuclear physics at

Copenhagen University, lots for him to sponge up here, even without understanding that Camp Century is a big frozen pretext for a nuclear apocalypse. Gregerson kept diaries of his time at Camp Century from which we can get an idea of the daily life. Quote, this is a horrible, desolate place. At least, that's the general opinion and the daily topic of conversation. among the Americans here. In a way, I do understand their point of view. They are made to work on just one single task during the three months at a time they spent here.

In the U.S., they could go out at night. Here they are confined to playing cards, reading or talking in their quarters, playing billiards, going to the movie theater, which mainly shows old lousy movies, or sitting in the library, which is not very well-stocked. Even so, I feel like an orange has fallen into my turban. That's a Danish turn of phrase. Is it? Yes.

Okay. And apparently it comes from a Danish, like, stage interpretation of Aladdin, in which like an orange falls into Aladdin's turpin. Okay. So I give that to you to do with what you will. I was reading a memoir about a woman who worked in the oil sands in Alberta. And it reminds me a lot of that where it's like, this place is ugly and horrible and all the people who are not from there feel very strong about sharing that because it's not home.

Yeah. Because they can go back to the Rockies or they can go back to, you know, the Atlantic Coast or whatever. And it's beautiful and wonderful there. but where they can make their money and where they can like actually make a living is in this ugly place. And then the people who lived there were just like, fuck you. Because this is where I'm from. And this is like, this is home. This is everything that I can make a living here and you're going to shit on it. It's just like very recognizable. These landscapes that are generally

looked down upon, mainly because they're misunderstood. And then from that misunderstanding, there's over extraction so that they are kind of a go. And remember too that a lot of of these people will not be there because they entered a Boy Scout competition to come and see the sites. They will have been assigned there. They will have been put there. They thought they were going to Hawaii and they're not. Yeah. There's a lot of that happening, I would imagine, at some level among the people who are, you know, also fair enough. Does living under three tons of snow in a cardboard box feel a bit like a grave? Yeah, it does. You know? I get that. Won't deny it. Yes, it does. That'll make you crabby. That, that'll, yeah, it's a crummy, crummy day when you wake up

in your snow coffin. Yeah. So according to Nielsen and Nielsen, quote, wake up time in the personal barracks was 0,600 hours. After quickly dawning underwear, shirt, trousers and shoes, the men, by the way, these are all men, would hurry through the barracks tunnels down Main Street and into the communal bathrooms, also called the 100 man latrine. Nope. Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good. That place probably smells, eh, you know what? Refrigerated up there. It's cold. It's cold shit. but it's still shed. And I believe at the beginning of the story you mentioned,

it's all melting? Yes, okay. Yes, yes. I did. There were so many sinks, showers with hot and cold water, outlets for shavers and toilets that no one had to stand in line for long to complete their morning routine, freshly showered and shaved. The men would make double quick time back to their quarters to dress for whatever

work awaited them that day, end quote. Okay. At around seven, breakfast is the first meal of the day. buffet style homie mess hall hardy like crazy no one had anything bad to say about the quality or amount of food in this place oh okay you were getting 8,000 calories a day per man because you were doing crazy physical work in ice or snow every day day you were taking care of a nuclear reactor yeah we had months worth of food stockpiled and if you needed something somehow it would get there like in a day or two like it was like uber eat style like holy shit that's like they were doing amazon delivery turnover times for like a beat you know what i mean was pretty cool that is cool

But like wasteful you have to amount like billions of dollars going into this to be sure. Yeah, that's yeah. It's the other side of that one. The work is interrupted by a large lunch and a post-lunch smoke, cigar cigarette, dealer's choice. In the ice caves. Probably in the mess hall. Okay. Like hotbox the fucking mess hall.

And then back to the grind until you have a gigantic dinner. After your evening meal, you have three hours of free time for hobbies, card games, letter writing, reading, maybe a movie. In terms of the reading, our young boy scouts get to take over the library as one of their responsibilities. And they say that like, not to detract from our other things as a supplement and everyone agreed. And, you know, we're having a nice time getting into ship shape. Last guy didn't know what he was doing. Great. The movie theater is an interesting one. Apparently the projector reels are so small that they have to be changed multiple times per movie. Oh. We know that our boy, Soren Gregerson, was not that hot on the selection. Josie, what major

blockbuster film of the 1950s. Think major. Think like the biggest, biggest, biggest movie you can. Like a movie that everyone would know. Giant. We were looking for the bridges at Toko Ree. This is an American film from 1954 about the Korean War. Oh. One of those movies everywhere. Everyone can quote their favorite bridges of Tokori line, surely. Okay. Remember when Tokori says, look at that bridge. Oh, right. Toko Ree. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is surely a character in the film as opposed to a place, one would imagine. Yeah, not the best-reviewed cinema in film history, although Sorin Gregerson wrote in the Danish newspaper Politican in January 15th, 1961. He had like a semi-regular news column that he wrote as the Scout and the

Ice Cap, and he's sort of like learning to type on the typewriter in this place. It's cool stuff, right? The Scout and the Ice Cap. Wow. The Scout in the Ice Cap. That's a good one, I. Yeah. He writes, I have now determined that the films I can see for free in the movie theater are actually not as bad as my first impression led me to believe. So it gets better. Okay. You get, you're down in the ice coffin long enough and then all of a sudden, that bridge, all of a sudden, this bridge is a topory. Yes. What a cool bridge. Look at that bridge. At night, after all this, you played your billiards, you've watched the bridges of Tokori real three, four, and five again. You go to bed nighttime, beddy bye. We keep things warm, although there's always a brisk bite in the air,

according to Kent Goring, quote, although the atmosphere is always sharp with a cold tingle. It is almost 100% dust-free. We do have to admit that Camp Century is a veritable paradise for hay fever victims. Oh, okay. Yeah. So there you go. My fellow sufferers, hope is only as far away as Greenland, you know? Hope is in an ice tunnel.

A shitty ice tunnel. Sunday was the day off, no work at all. Church if you wanted to. There was a little kind of area where the chaplain health services. And then Ice Chapel? Yeah, a little Ice Chapel. It was probably not as cool as you're imagining, though. Okay.

Yeah, I know in my head, I'm like, I might have my go to church, actually. Imagine a lot of just, like, kind of like portables that we've dressed up because occasionally, you know, film crews will come through. I get that, yeah. They're portables that we've dressed up for that reason, but they're still portables. On Sunday, November 13th, 1960, Sorin confessed in his diary that he did not get up until 1130, which that's aspirational.

Little cozy ice cave, not up till 1130. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm in my little ice cave. That's the dream. Much like you looked at the. dolphin story and thought like endless flooded waterhouse, that's the dream. Yeah. For me, little ice cave where it's warm enough and I get to wake up 1130 and my allergies don't

bother me, that's the dream. Like, that's what I pretend I'm doing when I go to sleep at night. That's where I pretend I am. They say you do sleep better in cold atmospheres. So they do. Makes sense. I'm cracking the window tonight, God damn it. Yeah.

But just not now because we have to record the podcast and traffic goes by. It gets loud. It's true. After five months, the scouts returned for their media obligations and then headed home. According to the New York World Telegram and Sun, quote, it was the eternal Greenland that had odded them, not the modern trappings. I can see the

weird romance of a country that has lured explorers, said Kent Boring. It is a land of desolate beauty. Camp Century Project gets glowing coverage in National Geographic, Popular Science Cover Story, visit from Walter Cronkite, the works to kind of fluff up. Look at this Camp Century. We're not hiding nukes here, but we want to draw a bunch

of attention to it. Insomniacs worldwide. Or like, that sounds cozy as fuck. Oh, my God. Exactly. leave. Yeah. So note that most of these are American sources. Denmark didn't hide that the project existed per se, shouts to the scout and the ice cap. But they seemed a lot more sheepish about inviting publicity than the Americans were.

Can you imagine? Hmm. There are even stories of the Danish government reaching out to the journalists doing stories on the camp and not quite suppressing things, but, you know, politely offering some guidelines. What if you didn't focus? on that and what if instead of a thousand words we just 200

250 quick 2 to 250 I'm not seeing page 2 for this I'm not going to lie yeah what's the last page in your magazine before the ass specifically Denmark was very keen about Ixne on the nuclear ney actere

yes we don't need to talk about this fucking portable we're not putting the word portable experimental nuclear honestly not react. When don't we just cut this sentence? Yeah. And again, you're saying that there's nothing past page 86. Okay.

Uh-huh. Got it. So I'm painting you a picture of a very bustling camp century, and it was at its peak, but the collapse, and I mean that very literally came swiftly. Oh, no. Yeah. Gradual collapse, let's say. No one's not like a disaster or anything. Okay, okay, okay.

But we ain't, uh, this, this structural shit, I don't know. Yeah. So on June 7th, 1964, we find out from the New York Times journalist Walter Sullivan that the much-heralded Camp Century, subject of these documentaries and this fucking scout in the ice shelf, and here's a picture of, you know, we're going to have Mickey Mouse come up here soon and, you know, dedicate, you know, whatever. Hotbox the mess hall, let's go. Hapbox the mess hall with the boys. Camp Century is done, so. It's over. We're done.

Oops. Quote, the immediate reason for the decision, which was announced several days ago, is that that the reactor is being squeezed out of existence. The inexorable compression of Arctic snows heaped one upon the other, turns the snow to ice and is shrinking the reactor tunnel. You can't build an ice. Why didn't you think about that? Why didn't you think about this highly sensitive, highly, highly, like, destructive material

that you're putting in ice where you can't build? It's sort of something that we're there in part to see if we can do, right? Because don't forget, Camp Century is just our, like, landing party experimental cover story for what are the logistics of building a bunch of nuclear tunnels in the ice shelf? Can we do that? Yeah, this was the experiment to like make sure. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So that's kind of the answer here is they kind of knew. They kind of suspected you can't build an ice. Then heat up your room and then repack the melted snow as the snow accumulates on top of the other snow and turns into ice. Turns out that while the imagery is romantic, a city under the

ice is not sustainable. Quote, geologists specializing in ice have long known that that the ice cap covering Greenland behaves like a viscous liquid. That means that any holes or cavities made in the ice will gradually collapse, first deforming, then shrinking in size, then disappearing completely. That is like slow water. I guess that's kind of what ice is in a way, yeah. This is mentioned frequently and openly in the various documentation about the project. There's even a picture of our boy soaring, the scout in the ice shelf, kind of like doing a,

Hey, this is a low, you know, tunnel now. Whoa. Yeah. Oh, definitely some of that action from. Everyone just assumed that the brilliant army engineers of the early 1960s would come up with a way around it the longer we live there. But nope. If we can go to the moon, why can't we go to the ice? Exactly.

Gotcha. The project ultimately was an informative failure. Not like we are able to proceed with Project Ice Worm. But we know why we can't, right? Yeah. We've tested the hypothesis and no is an answer, and that is the answer here. Has anybody told Trump? Does he know?

I just wonder. I don't think he listens to this show. Okay. I hope not. Oh, God. Gradually from 1964 to 1967, the U.S. Army completely abandons the site. The nuclear reactor is taken out, thankfully. So we're not just like leaving the nuclear reactor in there, which is good.

It was supposed to go to Antarctica to join Nukypoo. but no one was into it, so instead it legitimately went to Idaho to live out its life on a farm for nuclear reactors. Go chase some daisies and some bees. Yeah. You're not telling me any lies here, right? No porky pies, no porky pies. It goes, it effectively goes to Idaho to be part of nuclear testing hereafter with a bunch of other similar machines. So it's sort of like, it retires from the most strenuous part of its life living in the ice. It just becomes, it goes to a farm. It goes to a nuclear reactor. It goes to a farm, yeah. But we took the nuclear reactor with us because that has potential value down the line, right?

But otherwise, this is the 1960s. If we didn't pick up our trash after a picnic, we're certainly not packing our shit out of the Greenland ice sheet. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. The military left behind machinery, diesel, all kinds of other chemicals, food just left to rot there. Or to freeze, it wouldn't rot. It would just freeze. Well, unless the ice cat melts. Right.

the human shit. I forgot about the human shit. Yes, there is the human, there's millions, millions of gallons of sewage. And of course, our old friend, nuclear waste that we've just kind of left there because Greenland's frozen forever. We'll never need to deal with this problem. We can just leave it behind. Yeah. It's not worth our time. It's fine. I mean, it's practically in the trash anyway. It's dumb. It's fine. For the past 60 years, all of that sewage and nuclear waste has been sinking into the ice sheet 100 feet below the surface. Since then, climate change. change has gotten worse and the Greenland ice cap is melting. If we do not slow climate change,

the ice sheet will melt enough that a moving glacier could carry Camp Century out to the Bay near Tully contaminating the waters. How much nuclear waste are we talking? Is there a good amount? Yeah, there's no good amount. Well, this is something that we've talked about on the show before. How do you future-proof the nuclear waste that we've used? You did a whole episode about this. Things like 102, 104, one of these is called waste in time. Yeah. Really good job by Josie about all of like the stories of what do we do with the places where we have put the nuclear waste? Yeah. How do we mark those to future generations?

How do we treat them sanely and safely now? It's huge questions that we're not very good at answering. So we just tend to do them in discrete places that we perceive that people don't live, but really it's just places that marginalize people live a lot of the time. Exactly. Yeah. In 1969, a few years after the camp is formally closed in 1967, U.S. Army Photosolm. photographers return to document the state of affairs, the under-ice glow-up of the abandoned camp

century. And as you might imagine, it's very much crumpled inward. The walls are caved in, five feet. A filing cabinet has sort of like warped into the room and like the files poking out. You know what I mean? All the, that kind of like beautiful imagery of nature reclaiming and, you know, destroyed mid-century hatch, you know, from lost kind of thing. Oh, man. I'm so into it. That's my bad. So some things then happen from the period of like, let's say the 60s, late 60s to the mid 90s. Some things happen that prompt a further look into Camp Century. First of all, the non-binary icon of Nukypoo was decommissioned in 1972 after much environmental contamination that we kind of find out down the line.

So people start to be like, okay, well, if Nuky Poo was Pupinukis, what about when those Americans took up over there and had that nuclear? reactor over there. Because remember, we don't know anything about nukes. All of that thing about like the Danish PM looking the other way on the nukes and stuff like that. Yeah. That's all been hidden. Yeah, it's all been hush-hush. Let's page 87 after the ads. Yeah. But because the Americans blab and want to like put their big dick on the ice shelf in every media thing and let's invite in the Boy Scouts and the whole fucking works, the general public is aware that there is a nuclear, a portable experimental nuclear reactor that was on site in Greenland. So people have their

own kind of fraught feelings about that already. And there's this thing of, why don't we look back into Camp Century? Because, like, I know they left all their shit there. That feels like that can't be safe. They had a nuclear reactor. You know, all these things. Yeah. The thing that kind of kicks off the investigation into Camp Century and sort of a more modern, like, let's say mid-90s, which is where all of this jumps off, again, is something called the Tully Affair. What happens is, in 1968, a B-52 carrying hydrogen bombs crashes seven kilometers from the Tully Air Base. Oh, shit. 30 years later in the mid-90s, it comes out that all the people who were responsible for that nuclear waste cleanup effort had high instances of cancer, all the kind of like Aaron Brockovich shit that you would imagine.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. A plane crashed that had nuclear weapons on it. People needed to clean it up, and now those people in their older age have abnormal rates of certain really bad sicknesses and are dying and so on. Yeah. We have an idea of the effects of radiation and handling nuclear contaminants. So this prompted a re-look into the idea of the nuclear question in Greenland more generally, and from the Greenlandic perspective, how they felt jointly deceived by Denmark and the United States over their conduct in the Tully area.

Yeah. The mean colonizers and the nicer colonizers. The polite colonizers. They're still colonizers. A lot of energy gets drummed up around this. It becomes known that the Prime Minister H.C. Hansen had given the Americans' permission non-prison. permission to station nuclear weapons at Tully Air Base without the knowledge of the Greenlandic public, without the knowledge of the Danish public.

Yeah. This becomes a huge, messy, sticky issue that taints the relationship between Denmark and Greenland. Apparently, this was like a week before the opening of the Greenlandic Parliament for the season and the opening speeches for that year's session were just like, legendary scathing and directed at Denmark about what had kind of happened and how they'd allowed nukes there without permission, without anything from the people who actually live there, who again, were very much in the middle of being, like, wickedly colonized at this exact moment

in the Cold War. The Danish taint. Yeah. Yep. It's not all butter cookies, folks. You got to look out. It's not all blue circular tins and butter cookies. You open that tin and it ain't no cookies.

It's like all the sewing shit. You can't eat that. Don't eat the needle. It sucks. It's bad for you. It's bad for you. Uh-uh. says the Nielsen and Nielsen book, quote,

it plays into a discussion about the United States and Denmark using Greenland for their own purposes, and then the Greenlandic people have to deal with it afterwards. Yeah, they're the ones left to clean up the mess. Always. As part of this whole saga, Denmark is forced to open an investigation, which involves going back to the Americans and begging for clarity. Like, what was all that Cold War? Remember that?

You guys were like, what's this weird note you exchanged? Immunitions of a special kind? Yeah. We're a little bit out of the loop on this one. This major piece of foreign affairs work around nuclear weapons. We don't, we can't. The last guy, he died in office. So it's like a whole died in office.

And this is the Clinton era. So from an American POB, we do not give a fuck. We just beat Russia. We're riding high. We're like, sure, little bro. Love the butter cookies. Yeah. Watch out for those needles.

In 1996, the U.S. government declassifies the internal documents. And we learned for the first time that our so-called camp century, this sort of like idyllically named American vision for the future carved into an ice sheet, was merely step one in a longer-term plan known as Project Iceworm. It gets me every time. Project Iceworm was the brainchild of the U.S. Army Engineer Study Center, which to simplify in the mid-50s is basically the H-bomb department. A lot of H-bomb ship. Okay. The vision of Project IceWRWR was this. Use a network of railway lines to send 600 nukes zooming around ornate tunnels that criss-cross

an area of the Greenland ice sheet carved right in representing 250,000 square kilometers, 100,000 square miles, or 12% of the total land surface of Greenland. Holy fuck, 12%. Yeah, I saw, I listened to a history. dot com podcast about this and it was described as being the size of Alabama. Part of me, obviously horrified. The other part of me is like, imagine living in a time where like as humans, we were like, yeah, we can do that with no repercussions, no big deal.

Some of us are still there. I guess some of us are still there. Some of us are trying to get back there. Trying vehemently to do so. And it's just like, how do you, how? How do you not realize that, like, things are connected and there's an equal opposite reaction for every action? It's just, I... And then also, this is the 1960s.

So, again, in true James Bond style, you would need, like, some faceless henchmen, like, operating the switches and levers to, like, make sure that Noc 148B zigzags over to hidden tunnel 349A before the ballistic missile reaches your home in the United States. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's going to go super smooth. You know that. Right. All these people who thought it was kind of like ugly and boring and stressful when they were literally just like eating heartily and wrenching pipes in the ice, they're going to hate that even more. Exactly. Yeah. And again, it should be noted. Greenland doesn't know about project iceworm. Denmark doesn't know about project iceworm. So this is all coming out in the files now. Okay. Okay. So I, I guess I, yeah, I thought Denmark was aware, but that they, they said, say no more. They said, la, la, la, la, la, la, I'm not listening. La, la, la, la, la. And so they don't know. Yeah. Greenland was not even made sideways privy to any of this.

Yes. They definitely didn't know. There was a guy named Dr. Robert Weiss or Weiss, W.E.I.S. He was sort of like on site medical personnel, apparently didn't really have his work cut out for him because there weren't too many injuries. Just sort of like hail and hearty young men doing physically demanding work, but safely. So just pooping a lot, eating a lot, pooping a lot. Yep. Eating a lot and pooping a lot.

And what are we doing with the poop? Or just, that's for people a few hundred years from now to figure out. Yep. He mentions that when he was there, there was a lot of energy expended into this, like, subway project. Like people being like, let's build subway tunnels, line them with tracks, whatever.

And this thing doesn't even get off the blocks. Like, 1,300 feet into a new tunnel. A storm blows it in. Oh, okay. And we're like, oh, well, I guess that's, That's the answer to that one. Yeah. Right.

That means the railways out and with the walls caving in at Camp Century, right? Like, not only are we not doing our criss-crossing network of James Bond Railway Underground spy movie shit that we have envisioned in our kind of pie in the sky views, but also the little under the fucking ice lab that we set up is fucking buckling in so hard that the Boy Scout is noticing it. And he came here in 1960, the year that we built it. Yeah. This shit is buckling. Now that that's answering my previous question of like, well, why wouldn't they just know you can't build an ice? And it's because they really didn't know. This is how they found that out. They had these like very elaborate plans to do all this kind of stuff. And slowly but surely they realized this ice ain't going to make that possible. Okay. So I get it. There was sort of the attitude that like what we don't know, we can figure out when we get there. Right. Yeah. You don't know how to stop the ice from caving in. But like living amongst it will give us ideas on how to do that. And it gave us ideas and the ideas were, oh, we can't do that.

Yeah, exactly. As you might imagine, this whole revelation of Project Iceworm, surprise, this is what the Americans were actually doing in Greenland, that your Prime Minister was like sketchy, like 17% of the way filled in on and chose not to hear the rest, and no one else was ever told. I think you mean Project Iceworm. Project Iceworm! Sorry about that.

I think you've keeping me honest. this creates a big fight between Denmark and Greenland about who will kind of have to clean this up, especially from an ecological perspective, because the more we find out about both global warming and the amount of nuclear and human and industrial and et cetera waste that has been left in this space, the more upset we get when we think about it.

From the Greenlandic perspective, especially. This goes on until 2017 after extensive pressure from Greenland, Denmark finally after a lot of like hand ringing, oh, me, this is a bad situation. Oh, dude, who could have known such a thing? Oh, no. Who wants a cookie? Denmark agrees to monitor the situation in cooperation with Greenland. Greenland's like, no, we're not handing over the keys to you, Denmark, but we want like accountability.

And specifically much was made about in your woke era, you pledged to help indigenous Greenlanders, what now? Yeah. That was kind of used as a political point to. Yeah, here's a very real life project you can get your hands dirty with to help us out. Project ice worm, even. Exactly. But that's the problem. You cut the ice worm in half and still, it still lingers.

Both sides. Now you just got two ice worms. That's because of the nuclear mutations. Exactly. Exactly. So Denmark sends an expedition to the site who determined that nearly 10,000 tons of waste have been left in the ice sheet, which is now voluble. vulnerable to climate change.

Senior scientist, Dirk Van Asz, who works for JAS, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, quote, it's not a question of whether it will happen. It's more a question of when it will happen. That's one of our main conclusions. If climate change continues, and we know it will continue, this waste is not going to remain enclosed in the ice forever. If climate change goes on long enough, this waste will reach the surface of the ice and be let out into the ocean.

Fuck. It's going to be a nasty day. It'll be the shits. truly. In 2021, the Camp Century Climate website projected that we should be in the clear until at least 2100. So that's good news. The next 80, less than 80 years, we've got to kind of stew on this at least. One big bro who you will notice didn't offer any help in that cleanup of all that nuclear waste and shifty shit, the United States of America. Yeah, where are they? That's sort of, I think, been the U.S. stance like, we don't need to clean this up. We, have

abandoned it, question mark. Excuse me? We abandoned that in 1960, right after we dumped all that shit there. Exactly. Thanks for letting us put our nukes in your U storage, you know. Real big of you. What a horrible friend. What a hard. That's the friend who like borrows your car and then crashes it. It's bad. That's bad. Well, you want to talk horrible friends. We come back to today and Donald Trump taunting Greenland from on high. Have you heard about any of this drama with the hospital ship?

I just heard about it today that he's, but I don't know enough even. He's sending a hospital ship over to Greenland. Oh, it's rotten. It's like Donald Trump being ugly in the way that Donald Trump is often ugly, right? Basically, what happened is an American sailor was evacuated off a nuclear submarine outside of nuke by the Danish slash Greenlandic authorities. I don't know well enough to say. Okay.

This American soldier who was undergoing some sort of medical crisis was treated for free at the hospital in nuke and the danes in the greenlandic are like okay how can we help we are allies bitch bitch nato right bitch nato yeah so for nato reasons they bring this guy on help him out send him back on his way with as much discretion and dignity as they can kind of thing yeah and the next day donald trump posts on some fucking truth whatever at truth social which is not the place to go for the truth no or for socialization if we're being honest he posts that he's sending quote A Great Hospital Boat to Greenland

to take care of the many people who are sick and not being taken care of there. So basically this insecure fucking child is so bothered by other people doing a kindness to a member of his own military who is in distress that he needs to be like Greenlandic hospitals suck

we're sending a boat you know that whole fucking shit it's infuriating it's such a crummy approach to humanity And to me, it's the thing that I'm always, like, sad that Trump supporters don't see in him. Was there I'm literally just like, even if you take out the shit where all of his policies are bad. And he spreads lies about fucking immigrants and queer people like he breathes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, surrounds himself with white supremacists to beat the band. All the rape allegations.

Even if you get rid of all of that, which you should not, he's a fucking prick. Just like, can't take the opportunity to say thank you. Has to use the, anyway, point being. Well, and then I think, sorry, I'm going to harp on this a little more. Go for it. Go for it. The frustration that I have, too, that somebody would respond to be like, well, it's a negotiation tactic. Because then Greenland and the Danish will want to lock heads with America even more and then push him out and then we can come in.

And it's just, he's just being a negotiator. And it's like, that is the shittiest negotiation. You realize that, like, there is negotiating and then there's being a goddamn fucking human. Oh, he's getting any butter cookies this year for fucking Christmas. I tell you that. Absolutely not. No. No Greenlandic coffee for him.

Uh-uh. Absolutely not. And I just like, I hate when that type of shit-tastic behavior gets like reworked into like smart business. Strength. Into a strength. No, being a shithead is not a strength and it never should be. Yeah. But again, when you look back at the history of like American encroachment on Greenland as I laid it out to you,

kind of the whole time we've wanted it, right? Since 18. It's true. We cleared out the civil war. And we said, Greenland. And by we, I'm not American, but you know what I mean, the Royal Week. It touches on something I said earlier is like, we want that, but we want it to be hidden. We want the kind of neoliberalism.

The finesse version of it. Yeah, yeah, the finesse version of it. We want the Obama version of it, not the Trump version of it. Exactly. And that's really hard. It's really hard to take and understand when you don't agree with either view, but you're like, but I'd rather the nicety version, please. That's a weak argument.

and I understand that's a weak argument. So it's all just shit tunnels in the ice, baby. It's all just sewage and toxic waste, huh? Yeah. All the way down. All the way down. You get down into the ice, you're like, surely, if one thing is pure, it must be the Greenlandic ice sheet. And even that, they tried to corrupt.

Yeah. Yeah. And even that we are in the act of corrupting via climate change. Yes. So the hospital ship to kind of bring her back home, you know, we love our barges that barge in. Not so welcome by Greenlandic. Prime Minister Yens Frederick Nielsen, quote, President Trump's idea to send a U.S. hospital ship here to Greenland has been duly noted. But we have a public health system where care

is free for citizens, he said. He might not be familiar with that. Yeah. This is not the case in the United States. We're going to the doctor costs money. There we go. So let's make the subtext text there, you know? Yeah. I know you're not used to not paying for things, but it's on the house. He can have it. It's free. Yeah. And again, this is an incident of medical distress severe enough to like compromise an American military nuclear submarine operation to get this guy to shore, right? Yeah. This is nothing minor.

It's infuriating. On to the shores of people who do not agree with nuclear weapons and who are actively at odds with the administration surrounding this country. Yeah. So it's just like. Who just sent over fucking J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. to do some like come and kick the tires political theater there that nobody wanted or appreciated. Yeah.

So on that note, I want to send some love out to Greenlanders who are living with the fear of an unpredictable giant while still existing uneasily under the rule, however ceremonially of a colonizer. Despite this, they've been very vocal about their fates, speaking out regularly in support of Greenlandic independence in the face of encroachment. Says Greenland MP Nivirosing, we are not a business. We are a people with our own country and culture and language. we're not a product, we're a people. And that should be taken very seriously and that should be respected. So sort of a response to what you were saying about the Donald Trump's negotiation tactic bona fides. The response from the people who actually live there is don't treat us like a business because we're not one. We have businesses.

If you'd like to come and support, you know, local Greenlandic artisans and bring back some fucking sweaters for your family, that's one thing. But we ain't for sale. That's really, like, it's amazing how revolutionary that feels. in this moment. Like in the Trump era, everything is negotiated. Everyone, everything is a product, something to be purchased and negotiated and fought over that way. So to just like so clearly state, no, we are not a product. Yeah, we're not part of that. We're not that. Is, yeah, it's sad how, like, that has to be said. In addition to being against sort of the Greenlandic wishes around independence and around like self-determination and around propagation of our own culture,

we are not America, these sorts of thoughts. As one kind of final note of irony, it's really against the Greenlandic view of land ownership that America would come in and buy this place or annex this place. As part of its government, Greenland does not allow private freehold ownership of land. Okay, there we go. Whoa. So I mentioned that they're pretty like lefty, socialisty kind of, uh, free health care.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. As part of a drift over from Denmark, but more, I think, as part of their own kind of, like, circumstances as, like, a colonized people. Yeah. Says Khalirak Ringstead, 74, of a little fjord town called Kapesilit. Quote, since childhood, I've been used to the idea that you can only rent land. We've always been used to the idea that we collectively own our land.

We can't even buy our own land ourselves, but Trump wants to buy it. That's so strange to us. Yeah. Because the idea is in a Greenlandic context that we, are part of this with the land. Because that land is going to come back. That ice is going to grow and collapse and take over that filing cabinet, turn on its head, whatever.

Yeah, the land is very active in this relationship. If we interpret ice as land, but like a solid enough thing that you walk on, the ice shelf is the land in a green land in a context in a lot of ways, right? So to tie it up on a sort of note of environmental stewardship, says Raquel Sanamuinaq, an inuk woman from a family of shamanic practitioners, quote, the question should be, who are responsible for the land? The land has been here before we ever came to be and will be after we disappear. So that's an important note to think about as we think about our last kind of lingering images of camp century crushed under the ice, all of this waste and all of this

all of this waste conceptual and all of this waste physical. Sometimes in addition to being kinder to others, e.g. not putting secret nukes in their home slash ideally avoiding nukes to begin with is a part of that. There's also the idea that I feel like sometimes gets lost in a U.S. American, in a Canadian, in many a context, in a colonialist context of like taking care of the land for the sake of taking care of the land. We need, ironically, we need the kind of ice that supports us rather than destroys us. Yeah.

It's so funny that we started the episode talking about like having house guests and how lovely having a house guest who is respectful can be. But a bad house guest, you just. want them to leave and ideally flush their turds before they go. Exactly. But if they come and, you know, assemble the cation and groom your dog and clean the bathtub and do your laundry, like, that is a beautiful thing. But what if Chelsea Rose? What if Chelsea Rose was building that cationo as a pretext to install nukes in your basement? Oh, man. That'd be a mess. It floods in Houston. That basement is not safe for nuclear materials. We'd be seeing the walls come in.

again. Damn, damn. So that's the long and short of it, Camp Century, aka Project Iceworm. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweet infamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast,

shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At K-O-F-I-com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it.

Stay sweet. My main source for this episode was the book Camp Century, the Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice by Christian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen. This is the one-stop shop if you are interested in learning more about this story. Otherwise, you might also take a look at the documentary film Camp Century, The Cold War Beneath the Ice, a film by Peter Bardell. I watched that on the YouTube channel Get Factual. I also watched the 1963 episode of the US Army's show The Big picture, that's their television series. This episode was entitled City Under the Ice. You can find

it on the YouTube channel, The Best Film Archives. This documentary is also where you heard the clip at the beginning of this episode. My other sources included, Two Scouts return from Arctic Trip. Kansas and Danish youths tell of cold and isolation at base in Greenland, published in the New York Times, April 7, 1961. Melting Ice in Greenland could expose serious pollutants from buried army base. The Two Way on NPR, August 5th, 2016, first heard on all things considered by Christopher Joyce. Toxic Cold War Legacy hidden under thin ice in Greenland by Steve Descharm for Nunatsiak News, May 30th, 2017. America's Secret Ice Base won't stay frozen forever, published in Alice Obscura February 22nd, 2018,

that was written by Sarah Laskow, L-A-S-K-O-W. Colonialism in Greenland is no joke and nine things to know in Liberation News by Colette Boulonje, 31st, 2019, Trump triggers a crisis in Denmark and Europe. What a single phone call from the president elected to an unswerving American ally by Anne Applebaum for the Atlantic, January 18th, 2025. When the Pentagon dug ice tunnels in Greenland to hide nukes by Eric Neeler for History.com January 9th, 26. Most Americans remain opposed to seizing Greenland with military force via UGA of January 15th, 2026. No one owns our Arctic land, we share it. Say Greenland's Inuit. This is a really lovely photo essay with photography by Marco Jerica and reporting and writing by

Jacob Grunhol Peterson at January 29, 26 for Reuters. I also watched Greenland reacts to Donald Trump's threats by Sky News on YouTube February 2026. Lastly, I read, a doctor was deployed to an Arctic research station during the Cold War. Decades later, he learned its secret purpose by Katie Hunt for CNN, March 15th, 2025. Thank you so much for continuing to listen to Better Student for me. Sorry this one was laid too. We're doing our best.

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slash bittersweetin for me. And to our subscribers, Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D., Erica Joseph, Dylan, and Satchel, we love you. Love you very much. Bitter Sudden for me is a member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Josie Mitchell and me, Taylor Basso. Her interstitial is by Mitchell Collins. The song you are currently listening to is T Street. Brian Steele.