My current fort is going on 15 years old, I have oodles of food and drink, all my industries are running strong and I have a legendary military when all of a sudden along comes a giant newt who belches and croaks, beware his deadly blood! So I'm thinking "ah crap" because that's about the worst kind of syndrome to get, since dorfs track blood everywhere. I watch my war dogs fight it for several pages, but it eventually kills all of them and heads towards my distraction doors. (I have a couple of doors built randomly in the caverns near the first level entrance so that building destroyers will have something to do while my military gets into position.) I send my ranged and hammerers in, figuring that if I can't get a lucky headshot in, at least maybe I can bludgeon its skull through its brain before it spills too much blood.
Sadly, no. I bleeds all over the damn place before dying.
So I pull back my military, restrict civilians into their "inside" burrow. Abandon the cavern entrance by putting no-traffic restrictions on it and walling off the ramps down. Then I cancel the burrow restriction, send the miners down to build a new entrance to the caverns away from the old entrance (because I need the wood from the underground trees, having very little on the surface.) and figure I'm as safe as I'm gonna get.
Then my hunter decides to walk right through the pools of FB blood and passes out almost immediately. sigh
Ok well fortunately all that appears to happen is his feet blister and go numb, he gets dizzy, then he passes out. Another dorf has gone to retrieve the wounded, walks through the blood and passes out. Eventually my hunter wakes up and seems to be fine again. And in the meantime, someone else comes down to retrieve the other dorf who went down to retrieve the hunter. And he passes out.
So I turn on burrow restrictions again and wait for the passed out dorfs to recover and make their way back up on their own. Maybe I actually dodged a bulle... now who is passing out?
Someone went to the well to clean themselves and left a pool of FB blood on the floor. The next dorf to come in to clean themselves at the well walks through it and passes out in it. Another dorf comes to rescue them, walks through the now many puddles of blood that surround the well and passes out. NOW apparently dorfs are falling in the puddle and inhaling it? Because I start to lose dorfs to suffocation. So I lock the doors to the well until the dorfs that aren't dead recover and the dorfs that are going to die, do so. I open the door long enough to let the living dorfs out, which is probably a mistake and I should let them die in there so they don't track more blood around, but goddammit one of them is my legendary armorer. If only they would clean the blood off themselves while they are stuck in there, and then clean the floors.
Too dumb to live, I tells ya.
I've lost maybe a half dozen dorfs now, which isn't bad with my population of ~185 plus about sixty rotten little kids. I dig another well down to the water in the caverns and I'm good. And then I see pools of FB blood collecting around the new well. And now I have dorfs tantrumming because they had a friend die and they watched a friend decay.
I can only hope that the artifacts the new well is made from (artifact mechanism, artifact bucket, masterwork rope and obsidian block) along with all the masterwork fixtures around the place prevent an actual tantrum spiral. Fortunately I only have a couple of dorfs who are "miserable" and hopefully they will find someone to cry on before punching someone in the head.
Oh yeah, and my duchess suffocated, which is mixed blessings since I am already the mountainhome. Except she was also my broker and trader with several legendary skills. At least I won't get any more demands for Lay Pewter items. But I'm one of those players who tries to work with his nobles and at least prevent them from screwing the fort too badly, so I actually feel bad about losing her.
And the thing that really pisses me off about this impending tantrum spiral is that it would all have been avoided if my dorfs weren't running around naked because of the bug that prevents them from putting new clothes on. My military can walk through the blood all they want and it doesn't affect them a bit because it gets on their shoes instead of on their skin. My naked dorfs walk through it and it touches their feet and they are instantly syndromed. It's such a petty little reason to lose a fort because of a bug. I'd rather the impending doom were caused by some real disaster other than lack of shoes.