Are high-speed body parts a health & safety hazard?

Question

Now that traps that propel junk at foes are a thing, thanks to the introduction of minecarts, does the same mechanism apply to body parts, and if it does, are they capable of doing appreciable damage? The reason I ask is that I would like to add a feature to my dining room that will combine interior redecoration and psychological scarring of dwarves via the introduction of high-speed enemies/nobles to the dining room floor. While having dwarves see a family member get their lung punctured by an errant limb would certainly be a boon for psychological scarring purposes, I might have to make sure my hospital is up to the task.

Conversely, will a dozen cartfuls of miscellaneous body parts of the previous hundred goblins that thought my fortress was in need of extra iron be an acceptable replacement for cartfuls of giant serrated discs?

Answer 1

Yes, flying objects of all kinds can be dangerous, with an impact depending on the weight. For example, see this current bug where a rat skull fell a small distance and killed a hapless dwarf.

If you're dropping living creatures into the dining room, I believe that an exploded-on-impact creature's flying body parts will still hit things, but may not have the lethal falling momentum. A creature falling onto one of your dwarves may have its fall cushioned, and hurting the dwarven cushion instead.

I would advise either putting some nice glass walls around the drop point to prevent your dwarves from interfering with the exhibit, or dig a sunken pit under the drop point and designate it as a no-traffic zone. This should hopefully catch most flying parts and give everyone a good view without risking interference or having to put barriers around the artwork.

I think that using minecarts to fire body parts at enemies would still be effective, although probably less effective than objects with associated attacks, which they can make when flying. If you're just smashing carts into the foes, then the weight and momentum of the cart is what's important. In the end, though, even if showering the advancing waves of filthy greenskins with the remnants of their kin turns out to be less lethal than desired, it will still have been worth it! Just make sure you have a back-up plan.