Yes, how not to die of botulism: understand home food preservation. That's to say: bad bacteria proliferates without oxygen, without salt and without acid, that's why garlics in oil is a death recipe, it's not only the absence of oxygen but also the high ph and absence of salt.

Understand the bacterias ecosystem is also a good way to understand home food preservation, in a salty and no oxygen environment (like salted water) you incentive lactobacillus that will consume sugars to produce lactic acid (and thus lower the ph), hence not a good environment for Clostridium Botulinum and fungi...so yes you can use heat to kill Clostridium Botulinum but you can also use other bacterias and the environment, the problem with heat is that you often kill "all" the bacterias leaving a highway for "pathogen" ones if the heating was not done properly.

Lacto-fermentation is a fascinating world: https://www.thespruce.com/g00/how-lacto-fermentation-works-1...

And as a french guy, here we know a lot about cheese and lacto-fermentation :-) as all cheese, after coagulation, start from the transformation of lactose (a sugar) to lactic acid thanks to the bacterias (and lot of french cheese use...salted water).

UPDATE: the official recommandations to remove the toxin produced by Clostridium Botulinum: boil during 10 minutes, to kill the spore: heat above 120°C during at least 30 minutes, to prevent its proliferation in the first place: water with NaCl at a 15% concentration, OR 2% of acetic acid (vinegar) OR oxygen (but in that case the fungi will gently occupy the place).