How To Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

I was quite amused by this article that appeared on the BBC News website recently, where Leicester City Council admitted to being "unprepared for a zombie attack", following a letter from "a concerned citizen".

I thnk perhaps the person that wrote the letter was being facetious, but you never know. The think is about being a geek who watches zombie films is that intellectually you know zombies don't exist, but there's some small part of you that keeps insisting, "but what if they do?".

However, if zombies do attack then a geek is best person to know, because we've watched all the films and played all the games and we're subsequently the best prepared for zombie attack.

Here are a few things I've learned about how to survive a zombie attack.

1. Zombies traditionally move slowly. Learn how to run fast, or better yet, use transport and you can out-run them. Unfortunately zombies in contemporary zombie films seem to move much quicker. So this might not necessarily be a hard and fast rule.

2. The only way to kill a zombie is to get it in the head. Preferably with a big gun. A hit to any other part of the zombie's body will be ineffective.

3. Anyone who gets bitten by a zombie will turn into one. Don't listen to the infected person's desperate relatives who plead to spare them. The infected person will inevitably turn into a zombie and go rampaging through your hideout. Chuck them out into the zombie horde the minute you find out they've been bitten. There's no room for sentiment when it's a matter of survival.

4. Zombies aren't very bright and it takes them a while to figure out how to get through locks. Make sure your hideout is well secured. Preferably several storeys up. Zombies often seem to have trouble with stairs.

5. If you've found yourself a nice secure hideout on the fifteenth floor, and you've got plenty of food and water supplies to last you, then stay there. Don't be persuaded by the fellow survivors who turn up at your hideout and try to convince you that the best thing to do is to leave and head south/north/east/west, because they know that there are other survivors there. Whenever that happens it films, it never ends well.

6. Get yourself a weapon. Preferably a big gun (see point 2). This is more difficult in the UK than in the US, because we have stricter gun laws. But since all the shops will be abandoned, you could plan a raid on the nearest gun shop. According to Resident Evil games, shotguns are most effective. Or rocket launchers.

Of course, being able to play zombie games doesn't necessarily mean you'd be any good in a real zombie apocalypse. When I die playing Resident Evil 4, I can restart the game and try again. I am, even playing games, a terrible shot, and it's only through repeated practice that I can kill any zombies at all. And there's a difference between sitting in one's living room shooting with a games console and shooting a real gun. I have tried this, and I'm an even worse shot with the real thing.

And I feel I should point out that this is all hypothetical anyway. I don't really believe that there's going to be a zombie apocalypse. At least I don't most of the time…