How do you survive a zombie invasion? (Picture PA)

Got a plan for what you’d do if a zombie outbreak led to the total collapse of civilisation?

Bad news – you are almost certainly doing it wrong.

Simply hiding inside buildings – or God forbid, running around smashing in zombie skulls with a baseball bat – is a terrible idea, Cornell University researchers revealed after running the first ‘complete’ mathematical simulation.

The best way to survive is actually to run for country areas – in particular sparsely populated mountains (the researchers give the example of the Rockies, but the Cairngorms ought to do it).


By all means ignore the hordes of the undead and watch CNN

The Cornell team ran a simulation on a real map of America, with 300 million people, using techniques used to model real epidemics.



‘At their heart, the simulations are akin to modeling chemical reactions taking place between different elements and, in this case, we have four states a person can be in—human, infected, zombie, or dead zombie—with approximately 300 million people,’ says Cornell’s Alex Alemi.

‘Given the dynamics of the disease, once the zombies invade more sparsely populated areas, the whole outbreak slows down—there are fewerhumans to bite, so you start creating zombies at a slower rate,’ he says – recommending that people should head for nearby mountains if there actually is a zombie outbreak.

Five official tips on how to survive It is very unlikely that the dead will return from their graves to devour the flesh of the living – but you may be surprised to learn that official plans have been prepared just in case. The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and, more bizarrely, Bristol City Council, provide advice with dealing with reanimated corpses. Buy handcuffs and a stun gun We don’t have guns in the UK, so Bristol City Council recommends improvising weapons to deal with both the infected and the undead. Stock up on supplies America’s Centres of Disease Control suggest zombie outbreaks are much like any other pandemic – so ‘waiting out’ periods of acute infection, with a big stock of supplies, is a good strategy. Wait for the government to find a cure According to CDC plans, they ‘would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak’ if ‘zombies did start roaming the streets’. Buy a protective suit Buying an Ebola-style protective suit is a good idea, Bristol’s City Council suggests . Isolate your family somewhere safe America’s Centre for Disease Control director Dr Ali Khan notes: “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”