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[Iamblichos]

The chances of encountering fire-breathing steel spiders is nil on a new fort; animated head skin is around 75+%.

Not sure why you are so determined it's not a bug...?

[PatrikLundell]

If "fire-breathing steel spiders" is some mod, I have no idea. If it's an FB the HUGE difference is that FBs don't spawn in the middle of the fortress, and at a fair rate at that. Stuff on the outside can be avoided, prepared for, and dealt with, while lightning strikes in the civilian heart of the fortress can be dealt with only to a limited extent (you can, of course, prepare to cave-in the work shops at risk if you don't care about civilian casualties. Even easier is to have each workshop inside lockable doors and accept the loss of the civilian(s) affected at a regular rate. You can then use cages or atom smashers to cage/trap the resulting undead and the causing hair/skin as they emerge. Many players care about their dorfs, though).

[Fleeting Frames]

Yes, FB/Titan. My usual practice in defence planning is assume the worst × bad thing can happen and then prepare for it, so to not plan for one is definitely an unexpected answer.

The question was about what one uses to kill it that doesn't apply to hair....Though in retrospect, I guess minecarts qualify.

Though on the flip side, a bit of undead hair surrounded by cage traps doesn't seem likely to kill anyone by exhaustion? The civilians/hair should jump into a trap on the first dodge, I think - is caving in the workshop really necessary?

Not sure why you are so determined it's not a bug...?

Huh?

It may also be counted as bug, sure, but lets be fair - most bugs and features will remain for the foreseeable future and lot are over half a decade old. At that point, it definitely qualifies for part of the vanilla experience =D

Regardless, I think it's fair cop to have some enemies be immortal in fantasy game; just would thematically expect something more dangerous than hair (at least someone who has researched secrets of life and death from god of life....).

[PatrikLundell]

Caving in the workshops is a bit of an overkill (but that's how I'd kill a fire breathing steel spider FB). Cage traps will help a bit, but you still have the problem that most of the time you want the militia on hand to kill the "normal" undead hair and skin, but as soon as you get head hair/skin you need them to be far away or they'll probably die, either from exhaustion whacking on the unkillable thing, or from thirst/starvation in a cage while the other militia are dying from exhaustion (well, they'll actually die from dehydration or getting killed by the head thingie). A single civilian can quite often be secured in a cage trap, but if you cram a squad of militia in there to handle the lesser emergencies you're going to more or less run out of traps to randomly dodge into.
If you had the militia in there when the head undead appeared you need a lot of cage traps outside to catch the resulting undead. You will also have the facilities off line for months while the militia slowly dies. Also, in an embark where animals in cages frequently dies of extreme heat while hauled to the fortress the caravans were slaughtered by these dead animals being reanimated OUTSIDE of their cages. Thus, I wouldn't be surprised if dorfs dying of thirst in cages would reanimate outside of those cages.

I disagree with the appearance of completely immortal enemies in fantasy games. There should always be a way, even if it's complicated and requires extensive questing, and regardless, the immortal top bosses shouldn't randomly appear in the middle of your fortress without a really significant reason (which wouldn't make it randomly), such as stupidly opening a portal to an unknown, or poorly researched, place in your library.

[Fleeting Frames]

...That game plan of "milita dies whacking on anything that has head when butchered" sounds not so great compared to "let butcher risk it with just trap backup"....
At the point where military is already whacking on it, if they're disciplined enough to not flee from undead as civilians I'd probably indeed try some variant of cave-in, or perhaps flushing them through fortifications onto traps.

And yeah, the reanimation does put things outside the containers. Tuftedstockades ran into this with elven caravans getting killed by undead snowball.

But heh, I guess I do agree that head hair is about as impressive as giant mosquitoes, even if we don't see eye to eye on immortality.

Head hair's location of appearance being limited to few tiles and short timeperiod (after butchery) is not really random to prepare for inside-fort danger, thankfully. Better than most wildlife!