With shortwave, you can get on non-commercial traffic, that is to say not broadcast radio in the commercial sense, but real operational traffic. You can tune into regular traffic in theater, and occasionally even the more mundane military traffic. You won't get any good tactical info, but there's still plenty of general data comms to give a quick heads up, if you know what to look for.

You do have to study the airwaves a bit to glean what makes for good listening and what is propaganda or pure commercial traffic. But shortwave can be pretty handy, and not terribly expensive, and if the internet goes down or gets filtered, there will still be HF signals a plenty bouncing around the globe.