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[barryvm]

I don't know if this is the proper forum for asking for gameplay tips and apologise for the upcoming wall of text but I'm rather desperate at this point.
I've built a fortress in a (I thought) peaceful region somewhere at the edge of a mountain ridge with plenty of wood and game on top and some very rich iron/coal veins underneath.
Sounds like a perfect spot for a mountain hall to spend a long and alcohol fuelled life in but there is a small catch: approximately one to two times a year there are these massive zombie attacks during which the area gets overrun by hordes of undead creatures and necromancers intend on eating everyone's brains.

I've tried:

isolation: building bridges and walls to keep out of their reach helps but it does not solve the problem because the undead kill all the wildlife and any caravans and the undead raised from their corpses linger around after the official siege is ended (approximately 100 - 200 zombies every year and rising since I can't remove all the bodies in time before the next raid).

cage traps: effective to catch the first twenty zombies barging in, but the twenty-first tends to be an undead yak bull or elephant who then leasurely slaughters your dwarf population.
Also my mechanics would try to reload them, invariably getting themselves killed.

atom crushers: I've built an automated atom crusher with a "timer" (a goblin running around in a corridor with pressure pads) but after I got rid of all the necromancers the remaining undead won't attack the fortress and just linger around on the map killing migrants.

the bridge of death: a small bridge across a chasm with tons of weapon traps on it seems the best solution so far backed by cage traps but then suddenly about 30 of my dwarfs decide they should hold this terribly important meeting and where better to discuss things than on a picnic outside the "green zone" burrow in the middle of a zombie infested wasteland  !

That last thing (and the resulting tantrum spiral) brought fortress population down from about 60 to 2 (one is mad and I'm pretty sure the other is a vampire) in two minutes.
It seems the end is near but I've had variations on this scenario several times during this playthrough now and I'm not willing to give up yet but I can't progress far enough to get a descent militia or trap system going before the next attack (even cleaning the corpses would help a lot, especially since the fortress currently harbours more ghosts than dwarfs).
My fortress now undergoes these periodic near-extinctions.

This has been one of the most interesting and hilarious fortresses I've played yet but I have no clue how to progress at his point or to break the cycle.
Any help tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Loud Whispers]

Pit trap. Lets you capture all the undead you want without cages. Or just drop a roof on them. Destroys the corpse twice.

[Foamybeard]

Replace your opening doors with walls.

There you go, you now live in an impenetrable fortress.

[Hanslanda]

Replace your opening doors with walls.

There you go, you now live in an impenetrable fortress.

Dwarf Fortress Immortality: Cask of Amontillado-ing all your dwarves.

[Foamybeard]

Replace your opening doors with walls.

There you go, you now live in an impenetrable fortress.

Dwarf Fortress Immortality: Cask of Amontillado-ing all your dwarves.

Mind if I sig that?

[Hanslanda]

Feel free, my friend.

[thrush_titan]

I like to use more creative ways of playing with them at this point but if you just need to safely exterminate them en masse then nothing beats a delay trap airlock full of silver spiked ball weapon traps.

Like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But with another bridge at the beginning and filled with weapon traps and maybe spikes on z-1 (the delay trap is pictured is actually for goblin invasions, there are fortifications on z+1)

Let em charge shuffle in, then when they get to the end of the delay trap pull both levers and lock them in.  They'll lose interest and start to shuffle back and forth, setting the traps off again.  When it's nearly empty, let more in, rinse, repeat.

[WealthyRadish]

Construct multistory pillboxes in various places, station marksdwarves in them, and then pump magma to the surface. The zombies won't actually be killed by the flames, but their corpses will be incinerated after they're killed by the marksdwarves... though really, the magma will more likely than not kill the necromancer anyway. This is oodles of fun when executed well.

[Mapleguy555]

Submarine into a volcano.

[ZzarkLinux]

Practice your choice of abuse: Walling-In, Cages, Smashers, Melting Metal bugs, Butchering, and Forbidding doors.
(Or DFHack away the zombies, but that may turn you into an elf).

You can search TV Tropes too, it mentions DF and stuff.

[Kassil]

Build an obsidianizer. Zombies don't die when immersed in lava, but nothing survives being encased in obsidian - and as an added bonus, you can craft terrifyingly sharp swords from the obsidian to fill more weapon traps or sell to the caravans.

[Wrex]

Build an obsidianizer. Zombies don't die when immersed in lava, but nothing survives being encased in obsidian - and as an added bonus, you can craft terrifyingly sharp swords from the obsidian to fill more weapon traps or sell to the caravans.

But Obsidian Isn't sharp in the current version. It was roughly as effective as wet tissue paper as the blades glanced off animal hides.

[Flare]

Casting all the zombies in obsidian would only be feasible if you have enough dwarf miners to dig out the entire field on which you cast them in, or you could just drop them into a hole and make them into obsidian there, but this would take a bit more preparation as you might have to recaste several times during one siege to get them all.

Now you could wash them all into a small hole if you build the terrain correctly. The magma safe drainage ditches would allow the water to pass, and a bridge underneath would come up once all the zombies are concentrated above the grates to block the magma.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Build an obsidianizer. Zombies don't die when immersed in lava, but nothing survives being encased in obsidian - and as an added bonus, you can craft terrifyingly sharp swords from the obsidian to fill more weapon traps or sell to the caravans.

But Obsidian Isn't sharp in the current version. It was roughly as effective as wet tissue paper as the blades glanced off animal hides.

It's even a reported bug with an easy solution! http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5346

[parlor_tricks]

Danger room your dwarves?