Great post but I would put a finer point on with one thing. I-VR alternators DO have OV protection but it's different from a "crow bar". It has proven to be very reliable, not withstanding the quality of clone parts, Taiwan, Malaysia, China vs. original ND Japan produced.
Take a look at this IC chip.
Page one shows a typical application. The field is driven by a MOSFET.
Page 2 shows the inner workings of the IC, more sophisticated than a B&C voltage regulator. It does soft start, monitors shorts, under and over voltage, while controlling the alternators field (which controls Alt output). The IC has internal redundancy and fault monitoring.
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/302/mc33099-1188084.pdf
The IC drives an external MOSFET power transistor. Pretty bullet proof transistor. The IC controls the flow through that transistor to the field. The IC is very well protected and has redundancy. Any under, over, short will dump the control power (GATE) to the field power transistor. What if the MOSFET fails? IC removes power to the transistor gate which shuts the power down to field and alternator shuts down..... MOSFET transistor is likely to fail OPEN, so problem is no power from the alternator. However they could fail shorted. If that happened it would get very hot and melt then open. This is a very rare occurrence. Still keeping it as cool as possible is goodness, even though they are rated to 120 C.
What does the B&C do. It is a simple VR and can fail due to diode, resistor, transistor failures. However on top of the VR is a "crow bar". It is typically a thyristor or SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) There are many trade names. It is a switch, will pull down, close a circuit with a small input voltage. This will DEAD SHORT the power to VR/field to ground. It shorts and pops a CB (or blows a fuse). It's brute force, shorting power to ground to blow circuit protection. It does work unless it does not. SCR can fail as well. Also unlikely.
OV is pretty rare. Loss of electrical power is more common than OV. Again a lot of this fear comes from the mechanical external voltage regulator days. Aircraft alternators in GA have always been AUTOMOTIVE based. Some of the old certified stuff is pretty scary by today's standards. Most alternators die and fail to produce power.... However to each his own. I have seen photos and description of doing I-VR to E-VR surgery as being a little crude, but it works.