7 ms·

This seems pretty low. People depend on electronic navigation almost exclusively these days.

mikeash 7y ago
My thoughts exactly. How many millions would be unable to get to work (or stranded at work)? So many people have lost the ability to navigate without it.
- moftz 7y ago
  Your phone can do a lot with just the cell towers for navigation. The towers themselves would lose GPS signal but they are stationary, they should be able to pump out location despite the loss of signal. The guy out in the middle of nowhere might be screwed but there always should be a backup navigational aid when you are that far out. A GNSS blackout would be more of an issue for ships and planes. Both can get by in most cases with a GPS blackout using beacons, dead-reckoning, maps, and other old-school techniques. However, a major solar storm could cause issues with all of the navigational instruments (radios, compasses), you might be limited to just using a sextant and a precise clock.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Cell towers do not "pump out" location. Your phone queries Google/Apple/Mozilla/OpenCellID/whatever with the IDs of the towers it sees, the service returns approximate location based on its database of towers' locations. Same is done with WiFi SSIDs.
    - Piskvorrr 7y ago
      As a metaphor for triangulation, "cell towers pump out location" is a passable first-order approximation, even though the infrastructure is far more complex.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  Really, is that a thing? I'm completely unable to redo a nontrivial GPS route without the GPS after a handful of times, but I can definitely redo routine routes. At first I'd expect so can anyone else.
  - lexapro 7y ago
    What about all the people that started at a job recently?
    - Cerium 7y ago
      They would get a paper map? You can buy, print, or draw maps.
    - bauruine 7y ago
      google maps works without GPS you just need to remember the directions and follow the signs. Even if someone uses GPS even for the easiest routes doesn't mean that he's not capable of doing it without.
  - jslabovitz 7y ago
    Not everyone. I've always had a horrible sense of direction. I can follow a road or a map, but if I take a wrong turn or otherwise get off track, I get completely disoriented, and it's extremely stressful to me. I also seem to have a poor working memory that makes it hard to remember many steps at a time. I often need many drives over many months along the same route to finally etch it into my brain. With GPS, I'm much calmer and less anxious, and more willing to take risks with alternate routes.
  - myself248 7y ago
    When I go to a new city, I follow my satnav device for the first few days, then start altering my route -- deliberately missing turns, or starting out in a different direction, to learn where it takes me as a result of those changes. I'll study the map before I depart, and plan which turns to blow, and predict what reroute I think it'll give me. After a week or two of this assisted learning, I tend to have a pretty good base map in my head, so I start doing without. I'll leave the device face-down on the passenger seat, not giving me any hints, but still tracking my location and there for a quick peek if I get turned around. After a few days of this I can typically do away with it entirely.
- christophilus 7y ago
  Dunno why you were downvoted. I worked with a guy who literally used his GPS every morning for months to get from the same hotel to the same job site. The route consisted of something like three turns. One of which had a big sign clearly advertising the exit. Some folks would be incapacitated if GPS was out for long enough.
  - jsty 7y ago
    Whilst that three-turns example sounds a bit extreme, I often plug in routes I could drive without GPS to get traffic / road closure notifications & automatic re-routing around them. There are benefits aside from not knowing where you're going :)
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
I assume Galileo would keep on working? If you trust GLONASS then that one two. I seldom see Chinese satellites somehow.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  The assumption here was "no geolocation capabilities". But yeah, diversified satellites mean fewer eggs in one basket, even though the eggs are all very similar, so to speak.
jerf 7y ago
I suspect the distribution of possibilities considered across our level of ignorance is very, very wide. Even if $1B/day is the peak (which I wouldn't consider this anything more than very weak evidence for; no offense to the study authors, this is a freaking hard problem and I respect their attempt to answer the question), I'd expect it to be a very shallow peak in a very wide distribution. There's a lot of unknown unknowns in this space, and a lot of ways that things could cascade surprisingly out of control (e.g., "oops, it turns out that in this particular surprising GPS failure mode that this common model of airplane wants to land half-a-mile west of the actual runway, and while that isn't a problem on its own the modern avionics software is really insistent about that and literally won't let the pilots override, and now the entire air transport industry is on the verge of collapse because nobody wants to fly anymore").
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  Last year, I would have discounted that as impossible, but, well, B737MAX.
- morpheuskafka 7y ago
  Planes should be able to fall back completely on VOR/ILS systems, GPS is used pretty minimally in aviation. The new ADS-B Out transponders won't be able to transmit their location, but the traditional radar systems should be able to locate them the old way.
myself248 7y ago
Yeah, but after a few days of confusion, people would adapt. Driving around town would be the least of worries, I think. However, a ton of modern app-based things like ride-hailing apps and scooter rentals rely on the availability of GPS for their operation. Cars could still drive, scooters could still scoot, but reserving them and paying for them don't seem to have a fallback option, and without those parts I don't expect the operators of such services to have any incentive to operate those services.
jriot 7y ago
A basic map is all people need if GPS were to go offline. I have driven across the country, and around cities (both in the US and non-US) without using a GPS. Not really noteworthy nor does it say much about a lot of people who can't function without one.

My thoughts exactly. How many millions would be unable to get to work (or stranded at work)? So many people have lost the ability to navigate without it.

moftz 7y ago
Your phone can do a lot with just the cell towers for navigation. The towers themselves would lose GPS signal but they are stationary, they should be able to pump out location despite the loss of signal. The guy out in the middle of nowhere might be screwed but there always should be a backup navigational aid when you are that far out. A GNSS blackout would be more of an issue for ships and planes. Both can get by in most cases with a GPS blackout using beacons, dead-reckoning, maps, and other old-school techniques. However, a major solar storm could cause issues with all of the navigational instruments (radios, compasses), you might be limited to just using a sextant and a precise clock.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Cell towers do not "pump out" location. Your phone queries Google/Apple/Mozilla/OpenCellID/whatever with the IDs of the towers it sees, the service returns approximate location based on its database of towers' locations. Same is done with WiFi SSIDs.
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    As a metaphor for triangulation, "cell towers pump out location" is a passable first-order approximation, even though the infrastructure is far more complex.
emiliobumachar 7y ago
Really, is that a thing? I'm completely unable to redo a nontrivial GPS route without the GPS after a handful of times, but I can definitely redo routine routes. At first I'd expect so can anyone else.
- lexapro 7y ago
  What about all the people that started at a job recently?
  - Cerium 7y ago
    They would get a paper map? You can buy, print, or draw maps.
  - bauruine 7y ago
    google maps works without GPS you just need to remember the directions and follow the signs. Even if someone uses GPS even for the easiest routes doesn't mean that he's not capable of doing it without.
- jslabovitz 7y ago
  Not everyone. I've always had a horrible sense of direction. I can follow a road or a map, but if I take a wrong turn or otherwise get off track, I get completely disoriented, and it's extremely stressful to me. I also seem to have a poor working memory that makes it hard to remember many steps at a time. I often need many drives over many months along the same route to finally etch it into my brain. With GPS, I'm much calmer and less anxious, and more willing to take risks with alternate routes.
- myself248 7y ago
  When I go to a new city, I follow my satnav device for the first few days, then start altering my route -- deliberately missing turns, or starting out in a different direction, to learn where it takes me as a result of those changes. I'll study the map before I depart, and plan which turns to blow, and predict what reroute I think it'll give me. After a week or two of this assisted learning, I tend to have a pretty good base map in my head, so I start doing without. I'll leave the device face-down on the passenger seat, not giving me any hints, but still tracking my location and there for a quick peek if I get turned around. After a few days of this I can typically do away with it entirely.
christophilus 7y ago
Dunno why you were downvoted. I worked with a guy who literally used his GPS every morning for months to get from the same hotel to the same job site. The route consisted of something like three turns. One of which had a big sign clearly advertising the exit. Some folks would be incapacitated if GPS was out for long enough.
- jsty 7y ago
  Whilst that three-turns example sounds a bit extreme, I often plug in routes I could drive without GPS to get traffic / road closure notifications & automatic re-routing around them. There are benefits aside from not knowing where you're going :)

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

I assume Galileo would keep on working? If you trust GLONASS then that one two. I seldom see Chinese satellites somehow.

Piskvorrr 7y ago
The assumption here was "no geolocation capabilities". But yeah, diversified satellites mean fewer eggs in one basket, even though the eggs are all very similar, so to speak.

jerf 7y ago

I suspect the distribution of possibilities considered across our level of ignorance is very, very wide. Even if $1B/day is the peak (which I wouldn't consider this anything more than very weak evidence for; no offense to the study authors, this is a freaking hard problem and I respect their attempt to answer the question), I'd expect it to be a very shallow peak in a very wide distribution. There's a lot of unknown unknowns in this space, and a lot of ways that things could cascade surprisingly out of control (e.g., "oops, it turns out that in this particular surprising GPS failure mode that this common model of airplane wants to land half-a-mile west of the actual runway, and while that isn't a problem on its own the modern avionics software is really insistent about that and literally won't let the pilots override, and now the entire air transport industry is on the verge of collapse because nobody wants to fly anymore").

Piskvorrr 7y ago
Last year, I would have discounted that as impossible, but, well, B737MAX.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
Planes should be able to fall back completely on VOR/ILS systems, GPS is used pretty minimally in aviation. The new ADS-B Out transponders won't be able to transmit their location, but the traditional radar systems should be able to locate them the old way.

myself248 7y ago

Yeah, but after a few days of confusion, people would adapt. Driving around town would be the least of worries, I think. However, a ton of modern app-based things like ride-hailing apps and scooter rentals rely on the availability of GPS for their operation. Cars could still drive, scooters could still scoot, but reserving them and paying for them don't seem to have a fallback option, and without those parts I don't expect the operators of such services to have any incentive to operate those services.

jriot 7y ago

A basic map is all people need if GPS were to go offline. I have driven across the country, and around cities (both in the US and non-US) without using a GPS. Not really noteworthy nor does it say much about a lot of people who can't function without one.