There is something rather odd I've noticed about the way bed rest works in this game; Namely, it requires a bed. This may not sound to surprising, but the implications could be quite promising for those wishing to survive on waterless maps. Dwarves who can't find a bed won't rest in one, and dwarves who aren't resting won't need to be brought food and water. Dehydration, either by neglect or lack or lack of potable water, is the number one cause of death among resting dwarves.
[1] Taking advantage of this would require locking your wounded out of your bedrooms until they were healed, or simply not building any beds. The latter method might also allow dwarves with nervous injuries to live productive lives, albeit with the occasional spell of narcolepsy.
I freely admit that all of this is completely untested. The only reason I noticed this was because a miner in one of my forts got a minor injury and never went to rest, because I hadn't built any beds yet. Some things remain to be tested:
- Will "walking wounded" eat or drink?
- Are there any negative thoughts associated with not being allowed to rest?
- Will "walking wounded" heal at the same rate?
- Will they even heal at all?
Now, I care to much about my dwarves to deliberately injure them, then deny them bed rest. But if I remember correctly a few of you lot were breeding mermaids to make trinkets out of their bones a while back, so I figure y'all would be more up to the task. What do you say? For Science?
[1] Statistic from a study by the University of Making Stuff Up.