Nukes Below Zero

REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

Wondery | Ballen Studios

True Crime, History

4.3 • 668 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During the Cold War, the US built a secret underground city 100 feet under Greenland’s ice cap. It was disguised as a research facility but was actually meant as a site to launch missiles at Russia. The project failed and turned into a radioactive wasteland. But in the end, this classified military project accidentally revolutionized climate science.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Redacted, declassified mysteries early and ad-free right now.
0:07.0	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:15.6	It was summer 2017, but a blistering snow was pounding northern Greenland.
0:25.6	An environmental scientist struggled to drag a sled behind him, carrying a radar unit that was crucial to his mission, but he could barely stay on his feet.
0:34.6	Hurricane-level winds whipped across the barren ice, pummeling him
0:39.4	with snow. He couldn't feel his nose, and ice was forming on his cheeks and upper lip. But he kept his
0:46.0	eyes trained on a bright orange triangle just a few yards ahead. It was his tent, the only shelter
0:52.2	from the storm, for more than a hundred miles in any direction.
0:56.5	When he and his team of researchers landed in this wilderness a few days earlier, they'd been
1:00.8	lucky. The temperature was below freezing, of course, but the skies were clear and sunny,
1:06.3	so the team was able to set up their tents and secure their heat and water sources, but then the weather
1:12.0	turned violent. Now, as he trudged along, the wind hammered the scientist down to his knees.
1:19.0	He tried to stand, but couldn't find the strength. So he crawled with the sled strapped to
1:24.3	his shoulders, fighting against a fresh torrent of powder in his face.
1:28.9	If he didn't get inside, he could freeze to death.
1:32.3	He looked over his shoulder to make sure the radar unit was still on the sled,
1:36.2	but when he turned toward the tent again, all he could see was white.
1:40.5	The tent was gone.
1:43.0	The scientist felt his stomach lurch, but fought the instinct to panic.
1:47.7	He had to stay calm and move in a straight line exactly where he knew his tent was or
1:53.2	he could miss it completely.
1:55.4	He crawled inch by inch through the whiteout until he finally spotted the bright orange again, just two feet
	...

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