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[DoubleG]

Hey all, I've had a brilliant idea!!

My new fortress has a tiny patch of biome (barely 20x20 squares) that has the only growing surface trees, various syndrome mists and, most importantly, is a reanimating biome.

I could use this biome to create an army of zombies to munch anyone that arrives on the surface (visitor, invaders, I'm not too fussed). My question is, what's that best way to do this?

I could just build a structure out there, open the door when invaders show up, but that seems boring. I was thinking more a stack of minecarts ready to minecart shotgun spray zombies all over the map. But reckon that would need some planning.

Problem is, I think zombies climb out of minecarts when animated, and I'm not sure how long I'd have to hold the minecart there to make sure the zomb gets rezzed. Anyway, if anyone has any experience of something similar or can point me to resources that wqiyold be helpful.

[Fleeting Frames]

Zombie reanimation times can be inconsistent across tries, even in same biome. Some will pop up near instantly, others will start releasing miasma after two weeks before getting back up.

[DoubleG]

Guess the boring option will be more effective. Maybe I can still use minecarts to dump stuff there. Shame.

[Schmaven]

Hey all, I've had a brilliant idea!!.

I totally support your idea!  I tried using zombies as a form of defense for a few games, and it's certainly a fun challenge.  I had the issue of too many zombies, hurting FPS.  So a method to reset your zombie population to 0 is a good idea for when you want to do some larger projects.

In this thread, I tried to document the highlights of the various stages:

Spoiler: Pit Inhabitants: Normal View (click to show/hide)

One of the main considerations to keep in mind is that when 'your' zombies are not actively killing invaders, they will beeline into your fort if any path exists, no matter how maze-like it is.  This can make trade caravans and migrant waves more complicated if you actually want to trade, or receive migrants.  If you don't, then it quite easily solves that problem.

I wanted to keep trade and migration open, so the solution I settled on was to keep all my zombies in a pit.  Deep enough to injure invaders dropped into it, but not too deep to explode them into gore so that their corpses are still intact enough to reanimate and join the horde.

Undead echidnas are pretty much invincible, and have to be atom smashed, but fortunately are far less dangerous than giant undead birds.