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[Argonnek]

I recently had a Fun^tm tantrum spiral:
It started off with 7 dwarves deciding they wanted to relive the Age of Myth embarking on a site with HFS. Instead of doing the logical thing and waiting a few years to build up an army, they immediately start digging straight into the HFS.

Spoiler: when they breached the HFS... (click to show/hide)

...They realized that they were doomed when they found frog demons charging toward them out of the pits.

They all died horribly.
The King decided to send a reclamation party of 44 dwarves to secure the area.
When the dwarves arrived, they were set upon by the same deadly force that killed the first embark party. These dwarves, however, were prepared.
In the ensuing battle killd only 7 of the 44, but the remaining 37 started tantruming... then going berserk.
In the end, only three dwarves remained, left to rebuild what they could.

That was my favorite Spiral, what are yours?

[Teferi]

I fired a ballista at an elf and ended up killing a dorf instead. eventually everyone started tantrumming.

[Chaoseed]

Lokum Kellod, Child has destroyed Titan Cage (copper).

[Swivelguy2]

I fired a ballista at an elf and ended up killing a dorf instead. eventually everyone started tantrumming.

Of course they did - the elf lived.

[Dwarf fort 27]

I had 6 tantruming dwarfs seperated from my fort, like litterally 35 tiles away from my entrance,
they decided to smehow bypass my locked door, go grab some food in the great hall, and once hey got there, there hunger vanished and the immediatly started kicking some dogs to death.

[SinisterMinisterX]

I had a fort recently - 225 dwarves in year 11. I breached HFS and lost 23 champions to the fireclowns. Of course, the champions were friends with everyone...

First tantrum was at 203 dwarves. Six dorf-months later, the population had stabilized at 41. All the nobles were killed in the spiral, the replacements arrived in the middle of the ongoing mess, and all the replacements were killed. The 7 champions who survived HFS took out a 5-squad goblin siege during the spiral without missing a beat, then went back to starting fights. The survivors are still busy burying the dead ...

[Itnetlolor]

Name any reclaiming party in my megaproject. It's a running gag in my fort to the point of my implied backstory (over the course of a decade) giving history/mythology classes of the location and the Curse of Nonstop Cursing.

So to put it, my team leaders are beginning to hang a lampshade on just how common it is, and some are even coming to finish the project on a dare, knowing the inevitable fate.

Short story (IE- Causes):
Wanderers getting attacked by giant birds
*Bif* *Pow* *Verb* BATMAAN!!!!
Starvation
Imps

[SkyRender]

While I never actually had this happen, I recall reading of someone else who had a starting-seven-only fort where he made all migrants into hunters and sealed them out of the fort proper.  This resulted in a roving pack of what he described as feral migrants, wandering about killing everything outside the walls.  The instant he lowered the drawbridge for one reason or another, one of the roving migrants charged in and destroyed the control lever for the drawbridge, then promptly destroyed the rest of the fort too (with the help of his similarly feral buddies).  I still hope to mimic that catastrophe some day, just for laughs.

[azazel]

Stuff

It's a post somewhere in the The Real Wagon thread, IIRC.

[Sphalerite]

I had an experimental fortress of over a hundred mostly idle dwarves in which I attempted to develop an automatic mechanism for only letting immigrants with the farming skill enter the fortress.  While testing it I killed some twenty or so dwarves.  This triggered some of the dwarves in the waterfall meeting room to tantrum and start smashing grates, dropping other dwarves into the water trench where they drowned, triggering more tantrums.  Add in beserking dwarves and miasma from unreachable drowned bodies.  The population started at over 100, and managed to pull out at 6 functional, sane dwarves at the end.  They've actually managed to clean up the mess and fix the fortress back up, but even years later the fortress still gets the deathtrap label and no new immigrants.

[Jacob/Lee]

I got my 44 dwarf fortress ass kicked by 12 orcs and when I reclaimed a GIANT CAVE SWALLOW came and murdered 3 people creating and endless tantrum spiral causing me to abandon again

Why do reclamation armies need to all be friends?

[Particleman]

I've never had a tantrum spiral yet. I tend to play for about five to eight years, enough to get everything set up the way I like it and enough weapon traps out front to instantly render anything stupid enough to even look at them the wrong way into a fine red mist, and I get bored and start a new fort, unless I'm working on some kind of project. The fact that my computer's a piece of crap and by the time I'm around my fifth year my computer has slowed to a crawl factors into it too. So.... yeah, no tantrum spirals yet. I'm looking forward to what my first one will be like, though.

[n00bs4uce]

I had sent a mechanic to build a water-wheel and was killed by carp. Had 3 other dorfs nearby immediately try to recover his crap was thus killed(yeah i know about orders, didn't have a need to set it until it was too late). Apparently that was enough to make 2 other dorfs go berserk within a few minutes, and they happened to be my woodcutters so my infant military couldn't handle them and died thus fueling the spiral more. The last "survivors" from about 50 were just injured people who slowly starved, but in the end, one of the berserk woodcutters was left just waiting for more victims in my dining room.

[kalida99]

In one of my earlier forts, a goblin siege killed a large number of wrestling meat shields. they were friends with EVERYONE, except the other champions. So i had tantrums and insanity everywhere, people breaking the cloth prison ropes and bashing down doors. I placed the fort under martial law with champions placed in every major district and intersection with copper maces to put down any unhappiness and insurrections. I imagine a dwarf walking down a dark hallway then 2 or 3 champions with copper clubs appear out of a dark corner and begin mercilessly beating the dwarf regardless of his emotional state

[Swivelguy2]

My most recent tantrum spiral ended with 2 dwarves alive:

- My expedition leader, who is injured beyond recovery, resting eternally
- My carpenter, who is remarkably happy (given the success the rest of my dwarves had in drowning themselves), but who is constantly attempting to Attend Meeting with an unconscious dwarf.

And so they will stand, locked in attempted healing and attempted meeting attendance, for eternity. Or until something comes onto the map and kills them.