1) This is the technical answer: Cyanide binds fairly strongly to one of the molecular machines involved in cellular respiration, inactivating it. The result o

1) This is the technical answer: Cyanide binds fairly strongly to one of the molecular machines involved in cellular respiration, inactivating it. The result of that inactivation is that your cell begins to have issues producing ATP, even when it has nutrients available. Without going too far into detail, ATP is essentially the cellular unit of energy that your cells run on. Without being able to make more, your cell will eventually run out of ATP and it will die. Enough cells die? You'll die. 2) The more important point here is that not only is your intuition uninformed, but you appear to be incredulous as well. Ask yourself why you react to unintuitive results in areas you're not familiar with in the way that you do.