Climate of the Arctic continuously, with 30 stations in the Arctic from 1950 to 1991. These stations collected data that are valuable to this day for understanding the climate of the Arctic Basin. shows the location of Arctic research facilities during the mid-1970s and the tracks of drifting stations between 1958 and 1975. Another benefit from the Cold War was the acquisition of observations from United States and Soviet naval voyages into the Arctic. In 1958 an American nuclear submarine, the "Nautilus" was the first ship to reach the North Pole. In the decades that followed submarines regularly roamed under the Arctic sea ice,
Ice Station Zebra (novel) under the North Pole), , and . MacLean may have been anticipating the excitement of his British readers regarding the upcoming commissioning of the , the Royal Navy's first nuclear submarine. Also, MacLean may have been influenced by press reports about the nuclear-powered submarine USS "Skate" visiting Ice Station "Alpha", located on Ice Island T-3 in the Arctic, on 14 August 1958, as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY)". At the time that the novel was published, under-the-ice operations by US Navy nuclear-powered submarines were prohibited until SUBSAFE measures had been implemented following the loss of the . "Ice