It definitely could be a hardware failure, but if the system still boots fine, it’s probably not that. Based on the symptoms, I think you might have clobbered your PATH variable. This can happen when you do something like PATH=/new/path/ because the variable gets overwritten. You have to remember to preserve the existing value with PATH=$PATH:/new/path/. Don’t worry, this is reversible.
The best thing to do would be to fix or temporarily remove the commands you used to set PATH in whatever profile or .rc file it’s in. You can run whatever text editor you have installed by specifying the path to the executable. I don’t know exactly where vim is on Fedora, but it’s probably something similar to /sbin/vim or /usr/bin/vim. Keep trying locations until you find the right one. Then log out and back in and it should be fixed.
You might also be able to login as root and use the shell normally to fix the problem, depending on which file contains the faulty command. Hopefully this helps.
OP be careful, you’ve inadvertently spoken the sacred incantation and summoned the dreaded political content right into this very thread!