How to survive a zombie attack using consumer electronics

Let's face it: we are, at best, a couple of years from the undead rising from their graves and running amok. It might not be years away, it could be mere weeks -- and what would you do then? If you want to avoid having your tasty, tasty brains nommed out by a rotting corpse reanimated by some ghastly science experiment, you'd better listen up.

We've assembled a list of the very finest and most suitable technology to defend yourself -- and your delicious, tender grey matter -- from being consumed. This tech is readily available, and you might well have some of it in your home. If not, we're pretty sure the manager at your local Comet won't be too bothered if you break in and liberate some of it. After all, he didn't read this article and what passed for his brain has long since been chewed.

First up is one of the most portable products found in AV-mad homes around the world, and offers a couple of very simple methods of defending oneself. The Yamaha sound bar, or a similarly hefty one-piece speaker solution from any other manufacturer, is a very useful tool in the protection of soft human flesh from nasty rotting zombies.

Firstly, the sound bar can be used to crush the skull and brain arrangement of an attacking zombie. To perform this manoeuvre, hold the speaker bar in both hands above your head. Then, allow the far end to fall towards the attacker, helping it along as much as you can. The first blow may only stun the shambling wreck, so don't forget to cave his head in afterwards.

The other option is to play La Roux through the speaker -- the electropop duo can make any zombie noggin explode instantly. Just make sure you're wearing earplugs, because the unrefined warblings of the skyscraper-haired Eleanor Jackson are also fatal to the human brain.

We can hear you scratching your terrified heads about this one. How the hell can a fridge save me from a zombie attack? We know from the teachings of Indiana Jones they're a great help in surviving a nuclear apocalypse, but how do they prevent death by zombie?

The answer is twofold.

First, and most obvious, is the opportunity to hide from your flesh-hunting assailants. If the fridge is reasonably sturdy, and has a pull handle with a proper catch, the undead will not be able to gain access to the fridge. But what the reanimated lack in wit, they make up for in blind, unfaltering patience.

This is where the second part of our plan comes in. Your average Joe Zombie will finish feasting on a human when its flesh grows cold. After all, the undead aren't without some basic sense of taste, and no one likes the flavour of tepid flesh. So all you have to do to put them off eating you is to cool yourself down. A fridge is the natural place to reduce your body temperature to a zombie-confusing low.

A normal human body has a temperature of 37C. A dead, cooled, body will be the same temperature as the surrounding environment. Assuming your central heating still works after the dead rise from their graves, your goal is to lower your body temperature to around 21C. Annoyingly, severe hypothermia sets in at around 28C, which means you're going to be in serious non-zombie related health trouble before you can escape.

On reflection, you might want to mark this down as Plan Z, for when all other avenues are exhausted.

The Palm Pre is small, light and a delight to use for both email and phone calls. How, we can hear you wondering, will it help you in a zombie apocalypse?

Well, if you've ever used one, you'll be aware that it's a little rough around the edges. Actually, it's as sharp as a knife when you flip out the screen and run your finger around the raised plastic bezel that surrounds the keyboard. A mere irritation when you're using the phone -- but a deadly weapon in our arsenal against the flesh-munching undead.

Simply take your Pre, extend the keyboard, and slice around the neck of your decomposing target, being careful to avoid its grasping, strangling claws. Because putrified flesh gives way much easier than proper live skin, the head should detach relatively quicly. This means the zombie is now properly dead -- a great improvement on shambling undeath for all concerned.

Here at CNET UK we test a massive amount of superb AV gear. Much of it is incredibly heavy, but none more so than the Onkyo TX-NR906, which weighs in at nearly 30kg. The 906's weight makes it ideal for destroying the brain of a zombie. The only problem you'll have is lifting it into a position where you can deploy it against your lurching attacker.

There are two options here. The first is to lift it as high as you can and drop it. For most people, this will probably mean you'll only be able to crush the skull of a zombie child, or perhaps a zombie of diminutive stature (as the Petite Zombie Act of 2001 entreats us to refer to them).

For taller zombies, you might like to design some sort of winch. This will make the Onkyo TX-NR906 a very poor choice of portable weapon, but it could be deployed in your fortified home. We suggest rigging an above-door arrangement that automatically drops its load on any invading rotter.

Or something involving a catapult.

It pains us to use a glorious plasma TV to physically attack a zombie. But needs must, and a hefty, glass-panelled TV makes a smashing weapon to dash out monstrous brains. This is a two-person job, so make sure you've got another survivor to hand.

Two of you lifting the TV should enable you to raise it high enough and cause it to fall on to the head of your smelly target. Just don't get it wrong, or you'll have wasted a perfectly good TV for nothing, and entertainment is going to be crucial in this barren, zombie-filled world you've got to live in.

The more dangerous option, if you don't fancy destroying your precious TV, is to ambush a zombie with an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show. It's clinically proven that Kyle and his cavalcade of the most idiotic and pointless members of society can dissolve brain tissue instantly. If you don't live in the UK, re-runs of Ricki Lake or Judge Judy are perfect substitutes, and commonly found on cheap cable packages.

To be safe, you might want to record some of these shows now, in case TV stations are forced off air. Just be careful not to watch any of them -- for all we know, it could be these shows that start the zombie epidemic in the first place.

We think we've given you a jolly good start in surviving the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

We wish you the very best, and only hope you make it to an island somewhere with its own solar, wind and geothermal power sources, so you can continue to watch Blu-ray movies on your remaining plasma TV while waiting for the monsters to slowly die out.

We haven't tackled how to survive zombie crows, eagles or tigers. Nor is it within the scope of this article to help you overcome reanimated penguins, half-rotted sharks or the undead mosquito. Truly, it's going to be tough, but hopefully, with the right tools you'll make it -- at least until the humans get so hungry they set upon one another.