In its heyday, there was no posher place for the political elite to survive the Apocalypse than at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. In the late 1950s, President Eisenhower, who liked to golf, secretly spent umpteen-million of your parents'/grandparents' tax dollars to have a 112,000-square-foot Congressional bunker surreptitiously dug beneath this private retreat in the Appalachian Mountains. The Greenbrier, with its own restaurants, stores, bars, movie theaters, bowling alley, spa, and golf courses -- all behind guarded gates -- was considered the smart spot for America's politicians to ride out a nuclear war, while everyone else got to watch their skin slough off and fight giant cockroaches for food.

The bunker closed in 1995, and for the next ten years it was occasionally open to the public for tours. In 2004 it was closed again, and most of it was converted into a document storage facility. We must all die some day, but our memos and spreadsheets will survive.

Happily, not all of the bunker was needed for paperwork, and what remains has once again been opened to the public for 90-minute tours (at $30 per person) every Wednesday and Sunday. Visitors file past a hidden 25-ton blast door that once was camouflaged by a wall of poison ivy, walk down the 433-foot entry tunnel, and see sights such as the decontamination showers and the bunk beds that would have been used by Senators and Cabinet members when they weren't playing golf. [10/15/2006]