To be fair (?), it sounded like Thanos crushed his windpipe and/or broke his neck, so it wasn’t just suffocation that killed him.
Crushing the trachea leads to death by suffocation. Breaking the spinal cord that high up also leads to death by suffocation since the muscles responsable for breathing are no longer activated by the brain. It’s suffocation all around, believe me.
I think we should assume that Asgardians will suffocate eventually if deprived of air, but I guess they can survive for longer in space than ordinary mortal beings. But I guess there’s no reason why Loki died instantly, other than (1) a prolonged death after that would have been even more gruesome; (2) are you sure breaking the neck doesn’t do anything else? ‘cause I know death by hanging is better if the drop is sharp enough to break your neck rather than slowly getting choked by the rope; and (3) they really, really wanted to kill Loki quickly and in a nasty way because they hate him and his fans.
I jumped ship from Tumblr and this is where I landed. I'm a philosophy postdoc (INTJ, she/her) with a serious thing for Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Sometimes I even write fanfiction about it. Mostly Loki and Thor/Loki (sometimes NSFW), some miscellaneous Hiddles, MCU (Steve/Tony or "Superhusbands" is my secondary ship), occasional Cherik, Game of Thrones, LOTR, Whedonverse... whatever catches my fancy, really.
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Loki is the Philosopher King 