Tom, both became subject to death after disobeying God's commands.

The point is, the second death is a direct result of the judgment.

When people are judged for their sins, they are crushed under the weight of those sins. If there was no judgment, there would be no second death; there would be just a common and immediate death, like that of Ananias and Sapphira.

if Jesus hadnt come to be our sacrifice we would just die.

The question had a lot of negatives in it, so my one word response may have been misunderstood. I agree with Arnold's comments.

BTW, if Jesus hadn't become the sacrifice, Adam would have died immediately.

Wouldn't that be equivalent to the second death - a permanent death from which there is no return?

BTW, if Jesus hadn't become the sacrifice, Adam would have died immediately.

The sacrifice demanded by their transgression revealed to Adam and Eve the sacred character of the law of God; and they saw, as they had never seen before, the guilt of sin and its dire results. In their remorse and anguish they pleaded that the penalty might not fall upon Him whose love had been the source of all their joy; rather let it descend upon them and their posterity. {PP 66.3}

All Heaven mourned on account of the disobedience and fall of Adam and Eve, which brought the wrath of God upon the whole human race. They were cut off from communing with God, and were plunged in hopeless misery. The law of God could not be changed to meet man's necessity, for in God's arrangement it was never to lose its force, or give up the smallest part of its claims. {3SG 46.2}
The Son of God pities fallen man. He knows that the law of his Father is as unchanging as himself. He can only see one way of escape for the transgressor. He offers himself to his Father as a sacrifice for man, to take their guilt and punishment upon himself, and redeem them from death by dying in their place, and thus pay the ransom. The Father consents to give his dearly beloved Son to save the fallen race; and through his merits and intercession promises to receive man again into his favor, and to restore holiness to as many as should be willing to accept the atonement thus mercifully offered, and obey his law. For the sake of his dear Son the Father forbears a while the execution of death, and to Christ he commits the fallen race. {3SG 46.3}

Adam's life was one of sorrow, humility, and continual repentance. As he taught his children and grand-children the fear of the Lord, he was often bitterly reproached for his sin which resulted in so much misery upon his posterity. When he left the beautiful Eden, the thought that he must die thrilled him with horror. He looked upon death as a dreadful calamity. He was first made acquainted with the dreadful reality of death in the human family by his own son Cain slaying his brother Abel. Filled with the bitterest remorse for his own transgression, and deprived of his son Abel, and looking upon Cain as his murderer, and knowing the curse God pronounced upon him, bowed down Adam's heart with grief. Most bitterly did he reproach himself for his first great transgression. He entreated pardon from God through the promised Sacrifice. Deeply had he felt the wrath of God for his crime committed in Paradise. He witnessed the general corruption which afterward finally provoked God to destroy the inhabitants of the earth by a flood. The sentence of death pronounced upon him by his Maker, which at first appeared so terrible to him, after he had lived some hundreds of years, looked just and merciful in God, to bring to an end a miserable life. {3SG 50.2}

Adam and Eve assured the angels that they should never transgress the express command of God; for it was their highest pleasure to do his will. The angels united with Adam and Eve in holy strains of harmonious music; and as their songs pealed forth from blissful Eden, Satan heard the sound of their strains of joyful adoration to the Father and Son. And as Satan heard it, his envy, hatred, and malignity, increased, and he expressed his anxiety to his followers to incite them (Adam and Eve) to disobedience, and at once bring down the wrath of God upon them, and change their songs of praise to hatred, and curses to their Maker. {1SP 34.3}