Fighting the Undead

The only thing we can be sure of is that undead are resistant to it, not immune.
And I'd also dare to say that undead might have the same problem with chemical burns, as with fire burns.

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:The new plague, at it's most powerfull, requires a cooldown period before forsaken can settle in the bombed areas. However after taking a quick look at wowpedia, I'm not sure that the new plague is an acid, but a kind flesh eating disease that creates an acid as a by product. Since said acids cause burns... and don't dissolve organic tissue into piles of goo.

An extremely powerful acid would. A burn is just what happens when the effect is too minimal. Hot metal causes burns. Dumping someone into molten lava will cause melting.

Melting will be the last reaction. And that is only because of the amount of heat that is generated when acid comes into contact with water (lab 101: It never rains on acid land//Don't add water to acid).

And dissolving is not melting. Melting is by definition a phase change, so whatever the melt product is, should become solid when cooling down. "Molten skin" isn't going to cool down to skin again, you won't even have all the "skin parts" anymore.

Kristeas is correct actually. Acids burn, they don't melt. By merit of dragging the water (or more specifically, the hydrogen ions) out of the tissues. Just like heat turns it into steam.

Yes, in theory the heat produced will turn the cell membranes from their gel-like stage (fun fact: we're not solid. We're just really dense gels) to a vastly more liquid one. But it'll also make the water "boil".

Rather, the effect of the Blight is closer to a tenside that dissolves the "surface tension" of the membranes and thus turns you into a puddle of primordial goo. Essentially bursting every cell in contact like water balloons.

That suggests that a very minor exposure would lead to a nasty rash and cough. And a slightly worse one to bleedings from the nose, the gums, the eyes and perhaps even the skin.
It also suggests that in order to die you need to be trapped in the stuff. Which, according to what we've seen kind of fits. The Forsaken douses the area in the stuff. Fousing on escapes routes first...

Seems amazingly fair and balanced, actually. Thanks for sharing that, I'll keep that in mind for whenever I'm nuked by the stuff.

Gahalla wrote:Kristeas is correct actually. Acids burn, they don't melt. By merit of dragging the water (or more specifically, the hydrogen ions) out of the tissues. Just like heat turns it into steam.

Yes, in theory the heat produced will turn the cell membranes from their gel-like stage (fun fact: we're not solid. We're just really dense gels) to a vastly more liquid one. But it'll also make the water "boil".

Rather, the effect of the Blight is closer to a tenside that dissolves the "surface tension" of the membranes and thus turns you into a puddle of primordial goo. Essentially bursting every cell in contact like water balloons.

That suggests that a very minor exposure would lead to a nasty rash and cough. And a slightly worse one to bleedings from the nose, the gums, the eyes and perhaps even the skin.
It also suggests that in order to die you need to be trapped in the stuff. Which, according to what we've seen kind of fits. The Forsaken douses the area in the stuff. Fousing on escapes routes first...

Yeah... I'm going to have to bring out the biology book now. The bursting every cell sounds like one part of the cycle for virus reproduction. So for now I claim that the blight is a Virus.
I think this could actualy work, where the Lytic Cycle is aggresive enough to goo-ify victims and the Lysogenic Cycle both allows it to be carried but also to mutate organisms. The old plague did this to carrion grubs and possibly mushrooms in the plaguelands and it could explain the new plague goo monsters. Further, I could imagine that blight has to be kept in a nutricious medium, in this case a green-alchemic liquid.

Spoiler:

It's way too quick to be a virus. Moreover, it dissolves the outermost layer of the skin as well. Which are nothing but dead cells, where a virus cannot be produced. While some viruses do "pop" cells, they also have to be produced in sufficient quantity by the cell. And then those needs to spread.

This is most definantely a toxic compound and not a pathogen.

I'm trying to balance what I know of science and that blight-ingredients are ghost residue, vrykul blood and had to be kept in emerald dragon tears. Buffing a virus so it works faster and produces more viruses per cell I could consider plausible, maybe even needing the victim to have magic in them as a requirement to work.

Edit:
Bacteria and viruses could be considered toxins themselves, but they can also create toxins.
Not going to get botulinum toxin without the bacteria.