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[Pan]

So, in my current fortress, I just struck a cavern and is currently attempting to seal it off. I remembered the last time I tried that, which ended in a successful cavern safe zone, but a naked mole rat infestation (took me months of micromanaging military to get rid of them). I recalled having some problems with the miners drafted putting away their picks even though I assigned them to use them. So... how can I make my miners use their picks in an emergency situation (aka, not store them into a stockpile and beat the target with their fists)?

[CapnUrist]

The only way I can think of making sure that your miners take their picks to skulls is to assign picks as a specific weapon to the squad's uniform (and make sure they're using that uniform, as changing a uniform un-assigns it from a squad that's using it), and have twice as many picks as militia, so even if they don't want to use their mining pick, they can find a weapon-pick to use.

[Pan]

Giant bat just appeared... 

[JmzLost]

Turn off mining on the dwarfs in question, it conflicts with military uniforms.  Have some other dwarfs do any mining that needs to be done for sealing the cavern, while your skilled miners are in the military with their weapon set to picks(foreign).  Using miners (or woodcutters) as an emergency military hasn't worked since the switch from 40d to 31.x, when the whole military changed.  You can use them as a temporary military, if you turn the mining or wood cutting labor off.  Miners will usually have high weapon skill, and be better than any other quick-fix military, if you can get them to hold on to their picks.

JMZ

[Jake]

There have however been reports of miners and woodcutters hitting back if actually attacked by something, albeit not very consistently.

Incidentally, if assigned to a squad and set to "inactive = civilian clothes", miners and woodcutters will put their picks and axes back in a stockpile when they're not using them.