We’ve all daydreamed about our zombie-defense plan at least once, right? The ideal impregnable fortification—prison, castle, underground silo—where we could avoid all the gnawing and clawing, chill out for a while, and rediscover the glories of a small organic vegetable garden. But what about when the zombies breach our imaginary comfort zones? What weapons do we choose when it’s time to rain down on brain town?

In a recent “Volunteer Special” episode of MythBusters, Hyneman and Savage revisited a topic they first explored in 2013: what’s the better zombie-killing weapon, axe or gun? Originally, the team decided that axe was the better weapon, according to “kills” accrued during an exercise involving fake weapons and volunteer zombies. But fans cried foul as Savage, who wielded the axe, only tapped zombies on the head—clearly not using enough force to cleave a real skull. So the ‘Busters obliged and revisited the topic.

This time around, Savage tested a real axe against an “anatomically accurate fake head” to find out exactly what kind of swing would be needed to actually split a skull, which, it turns out, is about 120 degrees for arc and 7.8 meters/second for speed. They then re-tested their weapons using volunteer zombies, and again tallied the kills. This time around, as you’d expect, the axe did much worse than originally, although it still beat out Hyneman’s faux semiautomatic pistol.

But they didn’t stop the slaughter there.

Having tested firearms and axes, they added to the mix the Noisy Nuisance, the Saw with Claws, the Terrorizer of Trees, the chainsaw. And, as numbers never lie, based on the final kill count for each weapon (where zombies stream in through a gap in a fence), you can decide which one you’d want in your own Walking Dead situation: 57 zombies killed for semiautomatic pistol, 67 for the axe and…wait for it… 190 for the chainsaw. Savage, with the chainsaw, was able to “kill” all 190 of the attacking zombies in just 4 minutes. So, for each of your fantasy zombie homes, do consider adding a chainsaw. Brains are great fertilizer for a vegetable garden, after all.

And if you want to see more of this MythBusters episode, you can check out the episode’s after-show Q&A, as well as a look at the “MythBustSore,” below:

What do you think about these zombie-killing weapons? Were the Mythbusters right on the money, or would you use another weapon? Let us know in the comments section below!

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HT: Laughing Squid 

Images: MythBusters