system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Bacteria become resistant to antibacterial products but why not bleach and alcohol?

I understand that some of the bacteria survive the antibacterial products and the ones that survive are more resistant, however why doesn't some bacteria survive alcohol or bleach and become more resistant to those products?

For example, if I swap my skin with alcohol even if the bacteria under the swab are all killed when there be some on the edge that would survive but get a partial dose of alcohol?
gpt
Imagine a bacterium as a big factory, with the bacterium's membranes and cell wall being like the factory's walls and ceiling, the enzymes like the factory's machines and the DNA like a big book of instructions for building the factory.

An antibiotic is like sending a saboteur into that factory - maybe to break a critical piece of machinery, or to blow up a structurally important support pillar. The factory could counteract that sabotage by, say, positioning guards that could catch the saboteur (similar to how bacteria may become immune to an antibiotic by mutating an enzyme that can break down the antibiotic.

Bleach or alcohol (or also heat) are more like carpet-bombing the factory until just a pile of rubble remains - they damage a bacterium in many different places at once, and in a much cruder manner. That is also why you cannot use them internally to fight an infection - they would cause too much collateral damage to your body's cells.