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[bigcalm]

Ok, just started playing DF and my incompetence knows no bounds!

Currently, I have a zombie siege going on, but it's sort of ok, they can't get in (have a trench + raised bridge / removed ramps to hills).

BUT, there's a couple of zombies perched on the cliff tops above the entrance to where all the food / drink stores are, which means as soon as the dwarves decide they want to eat / drink (which is now all of them), they get scared off by the zombie on the cliff.  Which is frustrating because those zombies can't reach the dwarves or vice-versa.

I can't dig a tunnel to the food stores (all the miners are hungry/thirsty so are more interested in that)
I have some food / drink stores elsewhere, and probably in limited amounts and no meals.
I can't attack (no bowmen, no weapons really).  Lowering the bridge and attacking is probably going to be very very fatal for my dwarves.

Year 2, 49 dwarves.  Suggestions please before they all go mad because they can't eat / drink!!  How long do sieges last?

[dwarfhoplite]

You could butcher some animals you have inside. Other than you had better wish that vermin are many..

[nanomage]

Sieges may take several seasons, though I don't know if undead ones are longer or shorter than goblins'. Surely longer than whatever time your dwarves need to die anyway.
If you don't have enough butcherable animals and a food source inside, go dig to the caverns and hunt some wildlife/gather some plants there. Caverns most likely have water, and starvation takes twice as long as dehydration, so you'll win some time to make weapons and quivers for your military. There might be nasty creatures down there, but certainly much easier than a zombie horde (especially with a necromancer). Unless a particularly deadly FB comes up, caverns will save your fort.

[Garath]

make a few crossbows and bolts and shoot the few terrifying your dwarfs? Though if there is a necromancer they'll just get up again

[Sutremaine]

Couple of ideas:

1. Make a burrow covering only an area out of sight of the zombie plus the area of the access tunnel you're trying to dig, and set a civilian alert for it. That'll stop the miners from tasking the food and drink. In my experience, burrowed miners will break off from work quite frequently, but don't wander far.

2. If you have crossbows, quivers, and bolts, activate a dwarf and get them to go pick up the relevant items so they can deal with the zombies directly.

3. Deactivate mining, woodcutting, and hunting on all your dwarves, and put everybody in a squad with no uniform. Then station them over the food and release them from duty once they're there. This may be risky due to the mood hits from becoming a Peasant or Recruit. If you put the former miners, woodcutters, and hunters in a separate squad, you're set up to allow every empty-handed dwarf to carry a crossbow. Dwarves with crossbows will fire at enemies even while in civilian mode.

[weenog]

Wooden crossbows and wood or bone bolts to temporarily put down the zombies would be the fastest way (remember quivers).

Digging down to the caverns and using plant gathering jobs to get subterranean plants would be safer, but slower.

Digging down to the caverns, immediately resealing them, and waiting for subterranean plants to grow wild on your underground soil (or muddied rock) tiles would be safest, but also slowest, you might not have enough time to wait, harvest, and use, and replant.

[laularukyrumo]

Your best bet is actually to mass-forbid all the food before you worry about taking care of the problem.

The problem is that since there's available food on the map, the dwarves will find it and path to it. But when they get there, there's a zombie, so they get scared off. As soon as they regain composure, though, they go right back to whatever job they were doing. Eating/drinking is higher priority than any task that would make eating actually possible, but unless you forbid the food and therefore make it invisible to the dwarven hive mind, they won't realize that they need to work in order to access the food.