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[monk12]

Well, if you use my Mindless Switch alternative then you won't need to worry about a lever: just make sure the fortress plate is in a busy location. 

As for the FPS, it's really just a simple pump for the most part.  If you use the design I wrote up, you could use a regular pool instead of a river so that there's not much water overall being moved around.  It shouldn't be too bad.

Good idea, but if you ever move meeting halls you are screeewed.

This. My forts tend to grow like a coral reef; parts die, and the rest move on. It would be rather characteristic of me to forget about the deadman's switch when I move down to the magma until the forges flood.

Although now the idea of sealing myself off from the surface world by submerging the obsolete upper levels of the fortress is very appealing...

[DanielLC]

You don't need the drain plate. The first time you flip the switch it opens the floodgate and closes the hatch until the drain tank fills. When you flip it back the floodgate closes and the hatch opens, draining the drain tank.

Also, you'd need to replace the hatch with a retracting bridge for it to work correctly.

As a method to make it work without killing your fps, make the tanks as tall as possible and one tile wide. Since that won't last you very long, make two fill tanks. Every time the first fills, it turns on a pump on the second and a hatch under the first, causing it to deposit one water on the second tank, and completely drain the first. You could add a third tank and so on. The time it takes increases exponentially with each additional tank.

Also, do it in an area with an aquifer. That way, you don't have the water in the river moving around because of the holes left by filling the tanks.

Alternately, if you have a biome that freezes in the winter, you could use that to make it so you need to pull the switch once a year.

How about this: bring two cats. You need to continually butcher their kittens. If you don't, they make a catsplosion and kill, if not your dwarves, your fps.