My CMDR has a pretty good idea of the answer to that after today. He got hyperdicted, then checked out a damaged megaship and skirmished with his first Cyclops. No AX weapons so wasn't going to work, but played with it a bit and drew it away from the megaship. Then jumped back, scanned it and triggered a bunch of NPC rescue ships showing up. Then headed off to his first damaged station (and mine: the atmosphere is amazing) and spent an hour or two rescuing civilians. Admittedly, he steered clear of the signal sources and AX conflict zones... not exactly equipped for them.
I had a chilling quarter of an hour after re-equipping my original outfitting, after the rescue jobs. My pilot wasn't aboard anymore, and the rescue ship didn't have a Crew Lounge. I jumped to... what, three or four different systems, looking for a place with a Crew Lounge. I encountered station after station that was wrecked by Thargoids, or was still in repairs. I filtered down to High Tech systems after a bit but even a few of those were out of action.
The really chilling bit was realising I wasn't far at all from Zeta Horologii, which is one of my CMDR's main bases of operation. I ended up heading back there to pick up my pilot and level him up the last bit to Deadly. Reckon he's going to need that rank-up for what's to come.