Well if its any clarification for yourself, you can actually turn ice into water (undrinkable water mind, and its also a puddle not a actual water tile) by thawing it out in a warmer climate such as the underground away from the ice and the biome it is from (because it does not have a stockpile, you can dump and reclaim to move ice blocks onto warm/cold ground)
A zone to remove contaminants (either by cleaning/collecting) is commonly suggested for both cleaning and collection purposes, collecting snow as a material sounds useful as well as handy for letting grass tiles and crops grow in cold weather and maintaining the aesthetic that the fortress grounds are being tended to rather than snowed in and neglected.
Adventurers can collect snow in adventure mode to quench thirst (though eating snow directly will not hydrate them) by melting it down over a campfire.
However a way around turning ice/snow into 'drinkable water' is to either turn it directly into liquid water via a workshop reaction to put the product into a barrel/bucket (buckets if done correctly would allow you to fill up a pond that can be run through a screw pump if needed) or to create a drinkable substance out of it seperately (aka 'alcohol with ice cubes' or just 'ice cold water', its up to you) this can all be done with a clever use of modding the raw files.
Cannibalism is already a game feature, but currently because of bugs, no civilisations will commit cannibalism even if it is allowed during fortress mode (and they cannot use the proceeds of slaughtered/butchered sentients also, which is a even bigger bug) civilisation's that do approve/accept eating other intelligent beings will eat them in world generation also (and bring products made from friendly non-pet/minion sentients to trade, such as troll ivory/meat despite not being able to eat or use goods from slaughtered fortress trolls if you are playing as goblins via modding)
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Topic: Snow and cannibalism (Read 640 times)