I really like SDR. There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with it, including receiving satellite weather and other data directly.

Keep in mind that powering a PC with an SDR may be significantly more difficult than powering a battery-powered radio that can receive emergency services. The ubiquitous Baofeng UV-5R family can receive a lot of emergency services traffic depending on where you live. You can use CHIRP to program those memories to lock out transmit, which you should always do for frequencies you are not authorized to transmit on. If you’re not a ham radio operator, that means all frequencies.