Dwarves walk outside, think they are in combat, stand still until they die of starvation/dehydration

[TeH_Dav]

So now every time my dwarves wander outside to specific spots, they stand still and won't perform any tasks. Their thoughts indicate that they're in combat somehow, but there's nothing in the combat log. Even wild creatures in the area seem to be 'stuck'. None of my dwarves in squads are responding to orders. Anyone who wanders out there gets stuck as well. I'm not sure what to do to fix this. I've included some images below.

https://i.imgur.com/ffGUXma.png
https://i.imgur.com/CuL7EAV.png

[AlP]

The wild creatures are probably birds? They are trying to path to flying enemies and get stuck.

[TeH_Dav]

Originally posted by AlP:

The wild creatures are probably birds? They are trying to path to flying enemies and get stuck.

There are birds above them, but those birds are also just sitting there stuck.

[TeH_Dav]

Wha... Suddenly just all of them broke free at once.

[TeH_Dav]

And now they wandered back out and are doing it again XD

[CeciliumStar]

I had the same issue and it was also dwarfs trying to kill birds. Your best bet is to try and build a tower of stairs to the birds if you wanna fix it, but I think it might resolve itself when the bird leaves at some point.

[Shiranai]

Hunters! assign some of them.

[TeH_Dav]

The damn birds are sitting up like 50 z levels... =_=

[Loues.S.Cat]

I ran into a similar issue with gather plants...
any dwarf that could perform the labour would end up going to one of 2 or 3 specific spots and just... standing there... forever
They would literately gather in groups of up to a dozen, just standing there starving to death in some random spot in the plant gathering area.
They never gathered any plants :/

[AlP]

Originally posted by Loues.S.Cat:

I ran into a similar issue with gather plants...
any dwarf that could perform the labour would end up going to one of 2 or 3 specific spots and just... standing there... forever
They would literately gather in groups of up to a dozen, just standing there starving to death in some random spot in the plant gathering area.
They never gathered any plants :/

Try disabling gathering from branches, or give them stepladders?

[Loues.S.Cat]

There are no trees in my gather zone though.
I half suspect it may be a consequence of a fire that swept across the entire map wiping out every plant smaller than a tree.
maybe it left ghost plants everyone is obsessed with gathering.

[Vellum]

Putting this here incase anyone stumbles into this problem, but i managed to fix it by making a burrow for my civilians underground then drafting all of my militia members to sit at the entrance of my fort for a bit, then undid all of that and they went back to normal. I think it tied them up long enough to keep them out of combat and end the combat properly.

Other things to note is that if this has been going on long enough to notice and have people die of starvation, you WILL have lots of people keep dying of dehydration and starvation for quite awhile after, and you need to check to make sure you have drink stockpiles / plants to brew into new drinks, since your farmers likely haven't been farming correctly either.