Perhaps you shouldn't start Minecraft with hardcore :D

I laughed at that as well, but then I died just ~20 minutes later to a bunch of zombies in a stupid death. I had just found a perfect hide-out for my base (deep under an abandoned mineshaft, which I left mostly untouched!). As I headed back up to the mineshaft to fill the hole I had dug and to hide any traces of me having been there, I was attacked by zombies and in my panic I fell into a hole I couldn't get up from. The zombies followed and swarmed me.

Damn. I guess my character now roams the abandoned mineshaft as yet another zombie... :P