If you don't know how it works, it's "dead". If you do know how it works, you just fix whatever it is that's wrong! (The first thing to know is that the "satellite signal" did not die. There are many satellites, so there is a signal. You don't need to fix that.)

I haven't experienced that with a GPS, but in the late '80s I was in a twin Navajo that was loaded to the gills with navigation equipment for bad weather. The weather was overcast, but not bad. We were flying from Nome across Norton Sound (IFR above the clouds), and because the weather was so nice, the pilot felt no need to use everything, and turned on only one of the two Loran-C radios (this was the only plane they had with two, all the others had one). I went to sleep, which is normal for me.

So I got woke up by a very excited pilot saying "This isn't Saint Michael". Well, sure enough I looked out the window and he was right, it wasn't. Then he said that again in an ever more excited voice, and I notice his eyes were as big as silver dollars. That's when I realized he had just dropped down below the clouds fully expecting to see a couple of islands off St Michael, and didn't! His mind turned to jello.

It would have been better to have had both units turned on I suppose, but I was aware that a Loran-C can lock up at about 30 degrees off, and that meant we were either just far enough northeast or just far enough southwest of where we wanted to be that we couldn't see it. To the north were mountains and scrub forest, to the south in the far distance were a million lakes on the tundra that could only the the Yukon River delta. So I told the pilot that Ghod's Country was that way, and we needed to go the other way. Soon enough we were where we should have been.

The pilot just didn't know enough about how anything worked except that airplane! And then he told me the rest of the story. He had no sectional maps because they couldn't find one in the office! The other guy there said, "If you get lost just ask Floyd, he's been there!" and that is just exactly what he did! Scary. Turns out he'd only been flying out of Nome for three months, and wasn't used to quite this much adventure. For everyone else, it's a way of life here...

Ya gotta know how this stuff works, or you don't survive.

Captain, it does address your question. It wasn't local knowledge that made the difference. In fact that pilot had been there more often than I had. He's in the business of flying airplanes by rote and by note. I'm in the business of trouble shooting problems. His world is pre defined, mine is only what I can make out of it. He had a list of memorized actions that accomplish his job, and on that day he came across a situation where none of them worked. And as a newcomer to Arctic Alaska I'm sure he was well aware (and happy about it) of just exactly how remote he was from everything he'd learned. And all of a sudden, he was totally lost in the biggest expanse of "nowhere" that he could imagine. Like I said, his mind turned to jello.

I had never been exactly where we were, just south of St Michael. And it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. The business of knowing how things work, and being able to stay calm in the face of the unknown because of that knowledge, is what made that situation easy to work out. It wasn't obvious in an instant, because it wasn't a trained "how to" response. But I never thought for an instant that it was something I wouldn't be able to figure out. The pilot knew he was gonna die! I was ready for lunch...

When did it become the norm to discourage the learning process? I applaud the OP for wanting to learn more, to expand his horizons in any area that he finds an interest in. The naysayers seem to be of the same mind that gave us new math, a 'dumbed down America', and a disengaged population who stare vacantly at their phones. Maybe OP would have gone on to greater things with encouragement, jumped into the field of metamaterials and helped us all escape the limitations of glass with a new array of flat lenses for our cameras.

When did it become the norm to discourage the learning process? I applaud the OP for wanting to learn more, to expand his horizons in any area that he finds an interest in. The naysayers seem to be of the same mind that gave us new math, a 'dumbed down America', and a disengaged population who stare vacantly at their phones. Maybe OP would have gone on to greater things with encouragement, jumped into the field of metamaterials and helped us all escape the limitations of glass with a new array of flat lenses for our cameras.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_lens

Now Norman, nobody ever discouraged the learning process. Your response says more about your political views than addressing the issue. The point was that while it is fine and interesting and fascinating to learn about the inner workings of things, there are times when that knowledge is of more of an academic nature than practical. That is a fact, it is provable and it is obvious. Don't twist it and make it more than it is.

Read one of Stephen Hawking's books. Interesting and fascinating, but the knowledge there does not do a thing for our daily lives. That's all.