Now im still pretty um…shit at the game.That being said ive noticed there is a key to give an overview of various faction and if I use a two way radio i can try to contact them. However anytime i try they tell me im on my own. Is there a certain point/way you can come into actual contact with these people or is it in development?
In development, as of now.
NPCs have various and sundry issues. Including possibly crash bugs.
Hence, no NPCs at the moment.
You can access the factions screen by hitting either @ or #. or Maybe even ~, I really can’t remember. As it is, it seems that those are just placeholders until factions are worked in-- although by every right most survivors really do deserve to have legendary and heroic reputations with those on the outside, just for surviving and slaughtering everything in sight.
And any way I see it, factions will be worked in after NPCs are fixed, otherwise all freaking hell will break loose with regards to faction affiliations and combat. (that will be fun enough as it is, but for different reasons.)
Google “Dwarf Fortress” and “Loyalty Cascade”. 
As for NPCs right now, v0.3 prerelease still had NPCs active, v0.4 prerelease NPCs were removed (or at least, there are none in my first few evac shelters like usual.) Again, I assume that this was because NPCs being bugged was a contributing factor to the large amount of bugs in v0.3.
It’s kinda like taking a knotted string (aka something buggy) and sticking it in your pocket with some shiny new headphones.
Either way, if you forget about them the next time you’re ready to take them out again and listen to some blazin’ tunes you’ll end up with a tangled mess.
Evac shelter NPCs were temporarily removed due to assorted bugs that are proving very awkward to track down and fix. They didn’t have any crash bugs, but you could get weird past-self mission information, and such.
If you want 'em, you CAN still turn them on by editing files in the data/ folder.