I do hate to be a downer here but much of what is being advocated here is illegal. Licensing and/or type acceptance is required for use of most all of these bands:
HAM - Tech License gets you UHF and VHF, General License and Extra License gets you HF. Otherwise verboten to transmit.
FRS - legal for anyone but very short range - carry on.
GMRS - technically requires an $85 license for the whole family to operate at 5 watts.
MURS - Legal for anyone BUT with type accepted radios (which the radios in the OP aren't for MURS and thus illegal)
MARINE - Illegal to use on land - period (unless you're a bridgetender or something)
WEATHER - receive all you want but don't transmit on those frequencies licensed or not
BUSINESS - technically falls under the other VHF/UHF license requirements but you'll need a licence to "own" a frequency.
All of this applies to transmitting - nothing says you can't receive on a radio set up like this (though it is technically illegal to do so on some bands). To those who think that they don't need "no steenkin' license" I would simply point out that it's gonna be hard to master the skill of communication on several bands in the cold and dark. Good luck with that.
The scanner idea is a good one and an excellent entree into the world of radio. Get your license (it isn't really that hard) and learn to use your stuff. You'll be a lot more valuable to your loved ones when the shit really does hit the fan.
73
A Tech License grants 10M phone permissions between 28.300 and 28.500, which is basically useless with propagation the way it's been (terrible.) My last 10M contact was into Japan last summer on my beam and 100 watts. That's the ONLY time I've heard Japan in 5 years on any band sitting here in the midwest.