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[Alastar]

With the right trap design, you should be able to rely on traps alone, without covering the world in them.

Building destroyers aren't a problem - as far as I know, they can't reach a closed hatch from below. Have two of these entrances at the end of a corridor hooked up to repeaters, offset by half a cycle. Things will mill around in the corridor where I'm sure you can find a way to deal with them.
For bonus points: Have an alternate route (after another airlock of this type that will normally be closed) that allows you to capture things: cage traps directly for the most expedient way, a repeating bridge into a containment area where you can choose between a dozen fates of your guests at the pull of a lever if you're going for style.

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Weapon traps and pressure plates (outside of repeaters) are shortcuts - they're easy, FPS-friendly, and don't require the space of entirely repeater-driven designs, but will not allow '100% guaranteed, no mainteance ever' designs. Which isn't to say I only buld efficient traps... sometimes I avoid them entirely to enjoy other aspects of the game.

[darkflagrance]

You can prevent dwarves from cleaning traps or picking up triggered cage traps by mass forbidding with extreme prejudice. Failing that, lock them into a great hall during sieges.

[brucemo]

I've never played beyond a hundred dwarves so I don't know if things get nastier.

It seems to me that in most normal worlds with sane environments (trees and no alligators), you start getting ambushes around the time of the second outpost liason caravan.  So you have two years to go nuts before you need to be ready to handle trouble.

I start cutting wood immediately and go like crazy until the elves show up and cap me.  The woodcutter has hauling turned off and does nothing but cut for over a year.

If I am on a flat map, and most maps seem to be, I make a rectangular fort over the main entrance, and have this fort be large enough to hold the main initial wood stockpile.  That's pretty big.  I build this out of rock rather than blocks, and to deal with construction time I use profile to allow only the mason access to the mason's workshop, but make everyone else a mason, so they'll all run out and build anything in a few moments.  The fort has archer platforms on the corners but is otherwise just a normal wall.  There's one drawbridge in, then a long fenced path that parallels a fortress wall.  This path is loaded with weapon traps.  If you get past this and go underground you end up in the barracks, which I figure should give pause to most kobold thieves.

As long as I have this stockade done I can bunker down and not go outside to cut during the 3rd year, which is when things seem to be toughest.

So far this is proof against everything except one goblin wrestler (?) who was an expert crossbowman.  He was head-shotting my archers from six squares away while they were behind fortifications.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Caverns I break into and if I'm feeling like I can, I wall off large areas and use this as a safe tree farm.  After I do this I move the wood stockpile underground.  If I'm not actively messing around in the caverns I wall them in.  As far as I know nothing can break through a constructed wall.

Eventually FPS kills me though.