[@Hammerman]
Before this whole spiriting business, the station itself was pretty monster free. It's about as dangerous as an untamed version of our Earth. And while that is quite dangerous, it isn't anything humans haven't dealt with before. However after the spiriting away, that's changed to some degree. 

There could be small bands of people who may attack you, or even petty (very small scale)warlords and raiders. There are monsters of various kinds, too. Things that are more technologically advanced then modern earth are rare in the wilderness. You're free to handle encounters as you see fit regarding who you're dealing with and their nature. Just make sure to keep it within reason and use logic. Naturally, you're less likely to encounter raiders in a swampy area as an example. As a whole, I've been trying to avoid using canon universes with refugees as well. So I'd recommend you guys do the same for simplicity.

Those sort of encounters are enough to be of interest or threaten an individual character, or even a small military force. They're small enough scale that I'd generally let you guys handle them as and when you please. 

However, the refugees on the map are groups or threats that, at the barest minimum, are relevant enough to have an entire countries interest. At their maximum, they could even involve everyone on the planet. That's why we GMs will be handling them ourselves.