We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
DEEP WITHIN THE Arctic Circle in Greenland sits one of the US’s most isolated, and potentially critical, air bases.
At more than 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Thule Air Base is at the strategic halfway point between Moscow and New York City and was intended as a potential staging area against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Today, the base typically is used for allied surveillance of the northern polar region and has a stripped-down presence of approximately 400 Danes, 50 Greenlanders, three Canadians, and 140 American military and support staff.
Thule’s remote location makes serving on the base an experience far different from nearly anything else in the US military. The US Air Force orientation guide to Thule explains how, outside the base, there isn’t much of anything for miles — just an empty, icy wasteland surrounding one of the world’s northernmost inhabited locations.
“There is no ‘local town,’” the guide states. “The closest Inuit (native Eskimo) village, Qaanaaq, is located 65 miles away. There is no ‘off-base’ except for the bay, the ice cap and what appears to be thousands of miles of rocks and/or ice.”
Thule is also locked in by ice nine months out of the year. In the summer, a Canadian icebreaker ship clears the base’s port to allow for a rapid resupply of food, fuel, construction materials, and cargo — before the bay freezes again in mid-October.
For the few months of the year that Thule is not iced over, the surrounding tundra comes alive — perhaps improbably — with swarms of blood-sucking insects.
“The summer will also bring out swarms of mosquitoes,” the guide warns. “Locals refer to them as the ‘Greenlandic Air Force.’”
Because of limited space and the importance of knowing everyone’s location in a dangerous and disorienting arctic environment, all personnel regardless of rank live in dorms at Thule. Luckily for soldiers serving in one of the most remote places in the world, each of the rooms is provided with internet service.
Thule is too distant to be the target of a conventional enemy attack, but it faces a profound everyday challenge: the weather. It is not uncommon for the base to be wracked by massive snowstorms that delay operations and trap personnel to their dorms.
“Mother Nature has her own schedule of ‘three-day weekends’ for us,” the guide advises.
It also provides a handy photographic reference to the different levels of storm severity:
“It’s definitely a unique base,” one airman formerly posted at Thule said on Reddit under the handle SilverHawk7. He said that even the length of each day is different from just about anywhere else under the American flag:
The sun will set for the last time around the end of October and won’t rise above the south mountain again until the end of February. You’ll get maybe a month or so of sunrises and sunsets until the sun stops setting and you enter the light season, where the sun draws a circle in the sky. During the dark season, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a thing … They have UV lamps in most of the offices to try and offset this.
The Air Force is aware of the hardships inherent in serving at a base over 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and makes an extra effort to attend to the needs of the small number of personnel it sends.
“If you’re into gaming, the community center has a game room with several networked consoles to play on,” SilverHawk7 continues. “They bring in free pizza from the club and basically game until midnight.”
Not that there’s much else to do — additional entertainment opportunities on base include a bowling center, a fitness center, an activities center, and a consolidated club that has events ranging from Halloween parties to Viking events.
Again, there’s no town outside of the base for another 65 icy miles. Although there are still things to do beyond the wire, the welcome guide advertises a wide range of additional activities, including the Thule marathon, local guided tours of the surrounding area, and a summer skeet-shooting range.
- Written by Jeremy Bender
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
It may be cold perhaps boring, but it sure beats serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Your unlikely to be shot at or killed whilst serving in the Arctic
Is there a bar?
They had a nuclear accident here too, plane carrying nukes crashed.
Surely Shannon is their most remote airbase? This place has internet and all!
They probably get faster Internet than most of us in rural Ireland
Concentration of users. Easier to service than one offs dotted up every boreen…
The Thing comes to mind.
So thats where cross dressing originated from!
The airman got it wrong in that there is an even more remote place under the American flag -
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/35000/35400/sunrise_pho_2008265_lrg.jpg
Here the Sun rises once a year on the September Equinox, stays in view for 6 months and then vanishes from sight for another 6 months.
It may surprise readers that the Earth has two types of surface rotations to the central Sun corresponding to the planet’s two day/night cycles with the polar day/night cycle less known. As the Earth travels around the Sun ,it turns ever so slowly aside from and in addition to daily rotation so as the North/South poles are the only places that turn to the Sun as a function of its orbital motion, observers see polar day and polar night with polar dawn and polar twilight at the Equinoxes.
I’m surprised, but not Happy Birthday surprised
Simple reasoning – what causes the Sun to come into view each morning and disappear from view each evening ? – the Earth rotates to the Sun.
What causes the Sun to come into view at the South Pole on the September Equinox and disappear from view at the March Equinox ? . The answer is a different type of rotation.
Where these two rotations combine at lower latitudes we get the seasons. If it is a surprise it is just that people don’t give the polar day/night cycle much consideration but since the March Equinox about a month ago it is constant twilight at the South pole before it turns to that long polar night -
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm
Try the dark sector webcam and the constant polar twilight there at the moment.
been there done that lol
For those who care, all planets turn in two separate ways to the Sun. To answer the question as to what causes the seasons there is another two questions that needs to be asked first – what causes the Sun to appear and disappear from view each day ? and what causes the same thing to happen at the North and South poles at the Equinoxes (polar day/night cycle) ?.
About 50 seconds into the time lapse footage of Uranus where a 4 year period is condensed into about 15 seconds the two rotations become obvious -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=612gSZsplpE
It just goes to show how many scientists care about what causes the temperatures to go up and down daily in response to the daily rotation of the planet and the temperatures to go up and down over the course of the year (seasons) as the planet turns separately as a function of its orbital motion.
Should be big news but it isn’t.
No one really cares about the science of day and night, or equinoxes and stuff. Just interested in what there is to do in a remote part of Greenland.
After the fact that the Earth is round the next fact is what causes day to turn to night so for all those people who took the time to give a thumbs down, if they can explain the polar day/night cycle without a separate rotation to daily rotation then good luck to them.
have your say