Hotel Armageddon

Celebrate Poe

This episode continues with some additional travel literature that focuses on White Sulphur Springs. Then George talks about how the springs allowed southern visitors to be “acceptedly” concerned about their bodies. Perhaps the most important concept behind this series is that “the Virginia Springs were both a stage and a school” (Listen to this episode to see what I mean.) And finally the episode ends with the story of the huge secret bunker built at White Sulphur Springs to be used in case of nuclear attack. “Hotel Armageddon” ends with a sound that - WARNING - is not real.

Sources for this episode include White Sulphur Papers, or Life at the Springs of Western Virginia published by Samuel Colman in 1839, History of the Roads of Virginia: 1607-1840 by Nathaniel Mason Pawlett. Letters Descriptive of the Virginia Springs, the Roads Taken Leading Thereto, and the Doings Therein, Peregrine Pollix, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man by Mary E. Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe by George E. Woodberry from the American Men of Letters series, and Highways to Health and Pleasure: The Antebellum Turnpikes and Trade of the Mineral Springs in Greenbrier and Monroe Counties by Lana Martindale, Ladies and Gentlemen on Display by Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, and The History of the Greenbrier by Robert S.Conte

Nuclear Explosion Copyright 2013 Iwan Gabovitch, CC-BY3 license.