Nearly all organic material (like bacteria and viruses) is destroyed at temperatures above 60° Celsius. Some temperature resistant pathogens can survive slightly higher temperatures than this, but even the most hardy will be destroyed at temperatures above 150° Celsius.
But for prions these temperatures are hardly sufficient. They can survive being frozen, cooked, steamed, and even chemically treated with substances like formaldehyde and alcohol. Temperatures as high as 600° Celsius will not reliably kill them, and only in the 1000° Celsius range are they destroyed. At this temperatures, most *metals* will melt.
Why are prions so hard to destroy if they are chemically identical to the organic material inside our body already?
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Any organic organism dies when it gets hot enough for the lowest temperature resistant protein that makes up that organism changes shape. In humans this is a protein in the nerve cells. So the rest of the body can be fine but the nerves dies taking the rest of the body with it. Viruses and bacteria have fewer proteins and therefore are unlikely to have proteins that can not withstand heat. Prions however is just a single protein. And it is destroyed at its own temperature no matter what the other proteins around it does.
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