There have been many zombie survival guides making their way online over the last few years, but they all have one major flaw. They operate under the outdated and erroneous assumption that all zombies are slow-moving dull-witted sloths with limited motor functions.

Quite how this portrayal of zombies came into being is unknown (although it probably stems back to the cataleptic state associated with zombies in Haiti, created by voodoo, however the victims of these ritual attacks are not truly zombies; they’re just chemically enslaved and therefore have no will of their own). Regardless, its widespread adoption, along with the burying of news pertaining to zombie outbreaks by the church and, subsequently, world governments, has unnecessarily cost thousands of individuals their lives.

No matter what George A. Romero might say, not all zombies are vegetative walking corpses; some can move quickly and apply logic and cunning to outwit their prey. Thanks to illicit experiments on tiny islands in the Pacific, there are now two types of zombies: the walking dead, as portrayed quite accurately by the aforementioned Mr. Romero, and the new, far more deadly ones, infected by manmade viruses. Whichever type of zombie you encounter, groups of zombies can become particularly dangerous, and not just because of their numbers; they (like ants and bees) have a hive mentality, or collective consciousness as some researchers claim. This means the entire group will function as one, with one purpose…to eat your brain.

After five years of silence, as the sole survivor of the 2003 Cook Island zombie outbreak, I feel it’s my duty to share what I learnt in the field, so that you may stand a chance of survival if it ever happens to you. So here are my top 10 tips for staying alive.