Why do living things not rot?

I have seen an interesting documaentation on chineese mummies yesterday.
These Mummies still had fresh, and flixible tissue after 2000 years.
Thy looked like a corpse that is just a few month old.

Now the question was, why they did not decay.

But what is more interesting in this relation:

Why dont living things rot?

What is thae difference. if an animal or plant dies, it
directly starts to rot and decay.
What is the mechanism that prevents living tisse not to rot?

The bacterias are already within the body, before death, bur they dont seem
to harm the body.

Does anyone know the biochemical protection, that is imidiatly lost in
case of death?

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What is the mechanism that prevents living tisse not to rot?

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Our immune system takes care of that. Our bodies are continuously under attack from foreign invaders such as environmental toxins, pollutants, and germs. The immune system is our bodies natural defense mechanism against these attackers. The immune system is made up of white blood cells, organs and structures whose mission it is to identify and destroy disease causing organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. It’s the immune systems that'll protect the body against these foreign invaders, who would otherwise cause damage and/or rot. As for bacteria, fungi and parasites, they need enough oxigine to survive and to be able to help the rotting or decomposition process. Viruses usually die once the host cell they're living in died too, so when someone dies they die too. Organisms like maggots get attracted by the smell of dead flesh. That smell is the result of bacteria and fungi and parasites consuming dead flesh. Once flies, bugs, worms and other bigger organisms get attracted by the dead flesh decomposition will go fast.

To prevent decay having no oxigine around the dead body will help the most. Things like salt usually kill bacteria or slow them down and the salty smell stop the attraction of say maggots and the like. Largest part of decomposition happens not because of bacteria, but because of organisms.

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Does anyone know the biochemical protection, that is imidiatly lost in
case of death?

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As long as most cells are alive, biochemical protection will be active, once organs and glans are dead and can't produce more anti bodies or react in general to the invaders, it will go very fast. They'll become literally outnumbered very fast, this happens in a matter of hours depending on the size of the dead body,

Cheers