Interesting. Although I saw mention of AM radio, I think it would have been neat to have an amateur radio character in the story with a shortwave radio and police scanner. Being a ham myself, when something happens, first thing I reach for is my police scanner and/or shortwave radio. I noticed your main character has a problem with keeping his batteries charged, one idea is if he is technically inclined and/or knows someone who is, you can make a basic crystal radio for AM reception. If you have a long enough antenna you can pick up far away signals at night. I talked to someone in the UK that made one and at night he can pick up Israel, Syria and Egypt. BTW, crystal radios can be made to receive longwave (good if you live in Europe and some parts of Asia) and even shortwave. A side note, I’d be scanning everything I can think of from the public safety radio bands to VHF/UHF air to even government bands. Some is encrypted for the latter but you’d be surprised how much is in the clear too.
I wrote and rewrote this story so many times, I had mentioned ham radios etc in other versions, but the story grew too long, and my primary objective was brevity. Before, I had the narrator mention that if anybody was running ham or HF radios on their own power, he had no way of knowing it. It didn’t really add much to the story, so I dropped it. But yes, hams could still be operating, if they wound up in a safe location, with food, and could make their own power. But to non-hams, they might as well not exist, unless some rumors were passed along. In time, hams might develop their own news programming based on the reports they heard and shared.
My view on the current economic and political situation is that the party can go on for quite a while. First the Democrats will cement their power. They will inexorably expand the welfare state while their shrinking job base chips away at the middle class. We still print the world's reserve currency and the printing has yet to go full throttle. But that is inevitable due to the fact that the federal government will be able to fund perhaps 1/2 of the interest on debt at realistic (i.e. what most of the rest of the world pays) rates. When the emperor finally exposes himself, the fall will be dramatic, mainly because the party can and will be allowed to continue for so long. Bottom line, we have time, IMO.
So back to the technology. The internet and non-internet comms like broadcast radio can be made to be survivable and independently powered. The only hitch I can see is that rechargeable batteries eventually wear out. Personally I prefer a very heavy oversized battery bank because my hundreds of pounds of lead should hold some value (except the extreme situation of course). I rarely need to do a deep discharge now although that would quickly change if TSHTF.
The drawback is that it isn't portable so it must be defended. On the lighter side I have an Anker power pack and Mercury 10 solar charger that will last a long time provided I don't do deep discharging. That provides more than enough power for the Raspberry pi, but I'm not sure about the SDR because I have to try that out. After reading your excellent short story, that is high on my list. I have a bit of survival skill but as long as I do survive I will make sure I have some gear to play around with.