Can sugar and sodium hydroxide on boiling water be fatal enough?
In a fictional story I'm writing, a character pours a mixture of boiling water containing sugar and sodium hydroxide starting from the face down to the upper torso of a sleeping person, with the goal of killing them in a violent and excruciating way. The purpose of the sugar is to increase the viscosity of the liquid and make it a thick substance that sticks to the tissue, while also increasing the boiling point of the mixture allowing it to be heated to higher temperatures. And the purpose of the sodium hydroxide is to dissolve proteins and saponify body fats, allowing deep penetration into tissue. In a realistic scenario, would such an attack be fatal enough to the point that the victim has very little chance of survival even if paramedics quickly arrive? I know that if the victim does not succumb to their injuries on the spot, like from airway obstruction if some of the mixture runs down the throat or hypovolemic shock, that they'd probably have a chance of dying later on due to septic shock. But what really are the chances of dying from such an attack? Is it high enough that the attacker can be confident that it would seal the fate of the victim's life? If not, is there anything else that can be realistically added to the mixture that would ramp up the chances of death for the victim, and would not react with what is already in the mixture like sodium hydroxide to create a violent reaction or create something less fatal?