You scared me for a while again, and then I wanted to be sure how I should act in case of a close encounter with a porcupine. So I went straight to YouTube and searched for "grisly video of porcupine shooting quills." The fourth result for me was a video from Smithsonian Channel with the title of "Can a Porcupine Shoot its Quills?" Since it was also a short video, I clicked on it with quivering finger and heart, and forced myself to watch it.

And then the narrator said they cannot shoot their quills. Any damage to tissue has to be a result of direct contact with the porcupine. It seems that I just have to be scared of damaging projectiles originating from man-made machines, and not from porcupines. You can watch the video here.