What is the SAFEST way to kill a zombie?

I've contemplated this for a long time. If the zombie apocalypse occurs, what would be the best method to killing zombies? Many people might say a chainsaw, but they don't know that you not only have to be really close, but infected blood would be splattering everywhere. Guns? Not only do you have to be a great shot in a panicked situation, but you are making a loud noise that announces your presence to everyone, humans and zombies alike, that you are there. You shot one zombie? Great. Now there are 20 more. Good luck. What is the solution? What is the best way to kill a zombie? For purposes of this scenario the zombies are just your standard shamblers. Freshly reanimated corpses would move faster, almost to a jogging pace. Those that have been infected a long time would shamble. Of course you would also have crawlers as well. They are particularly drawn to light and sound.

I'll go ahead and offer what I think is the best single weapon do deal with a zombie, and then the best method to get rid of multiple zombies. I couldn't find an image like this weapon design I came up with on the net, but it's basically a lance with a two pronged fork. I drew a sketch of it: http://oi58.tinypic.com/dxcz0y.jpg The point here is that the prongs are far enough apart so that you can use it to push a zombie away from you, then use one of the prongs to go in for a quick gouge to the eye to pierce the brain. It can also be useful to hold crawlers down, and works very well in conjunction with another weapon if receiving assistance from another human. A device like this is simplistic so it would be easy to weld together with sawed off pipes. The best method to kill a zombie is to knock it off balance, then go in for the quick kill.

Traps are the best way to get rid of zombies, but as far as explosives and snipers go, they make a lot of noise. Picking off zombies surrounding a pharmacy from a long distance with a sniper is a very tempting idea, but while you lying down on the ground taking down zombies 400 yards away any zombie who has heard your gun can sneak up from behind and kill you, or you can find yourself surrounded by time your done. As far as traps go, the best one you can make is a spring loaded trap. The best thing you can do is find a base that is high up, like the roof of a building. You make a spring-loaded bridge that connects two buildings. If a certain amount of weight is on the bridge, the trap door activates, dropping whoever was on the bridge to the ground below, splitting their heads open. Just Make it so that it has enough to support your own weight. That way you only ever have to deal with one zombie at a time unless you make a manual switch on the other side that drops the bridge.

Well, if your goal is to kill as much zombies as you can in an urban area you can attached explosives on key support beams in an office building and have some sort of loud sound device on the roof that draws zombies in from a mile away. Once they are in, you blow the building and all the zombies inside get buried. It's still a risky operation as you never know how many zombies might be in the area. With a lot of planning it might be effective in making a general area less infested. As far as the sniper goes, if you really want to use it you need another person around you to keep watch, and be ready to abandon the area entirely if you draw too much attention. To me snipers seem like more of a worst case scenario option, where you are just watching other group members raid some place and shoot zombies if things go south. For zombies that can climb...I never heard of a zombie that can do that as it requires a certain level of intelligence. If that were the case we'd really be screwed. But if that happened, I'd have to make an elevator pulley system, where you would have to pull up on a rope to take you up to a raised platform that is unclimbable otherwise. Altitude is always your best friend in a zombie apocalypse.

Decomposed flesh explodes if out in the sun for days, so there would be no zombie apocalypse. They'd all be killed by the sun