“ In the end I I just started a new game and it ran fine. Almost like the new game created got a bad creation script or something. Makes me wonder about all those peopleI helped with freezes before assuming it was a FPS or weapon debris issue.”
I am glad you said that.
I have similar suspicions.
Like I was just saying I have had literally about 50+ starts to the game out of the 5000 hours played and this was the first time I ever ran into the issue of crashing in pre-war Sanctuary.
I had a few things that may have been the cause.
1. I verified my files (trying to ditch the mortal settler issue) which reset all my graphics. Which I doubled checked all the options, toggled option on/off.
2. I had a crash putting the vault suit on and restarting from the autosave led to a crash 3 seconds after loading 10/10 times. Which I kind figured might have been an issue with Conqueror scripts restarting, and 5/5 times it crashed without loading mods (which means either the scripting damage was already done or it is a common vanilla issue.) Considering I help about 2-5 people a week with that same kind of crash and they aint running Conqueror I think I can safely rule Conqueror out as being the issue.
3. Usually it is related to people trying to run with weapon debris on (without supported drivers) and trying to run the game at like 200 FPS. Which neither applies to me because my weapon debris works on my RTX 2070 and I capped the game at 60 FPS.
However saying "@#$% it" and just starting a new game and everything was fine kinda rules both of the above out.
Toss, them save files.

start over.
you’ll be happier.
Yeah I just got to thinking about a guy I helped out a few weeks ago. He somehow exited Fort Hagen and did not trigger the Prydwen, so it never arrived (which he left out til later.) He literally carried forward a bug that almost every quest in Act II and Act III had to be completed via console commands. Most likely because every script checking to see if NPCs exist got stopped.
Yeah I aint buying a ticket to that rodeo.