NPCs in ranch base disappeared?

[Prodigy]

After launching my game, I decided to go out into the forest to the west of my ranch camp to forage for eggs and wild vegetables. Upon returning, I noticed that all of the NPCs in my ranch camp, with the exception of the crop overseer and the useless NPCs in the barn, had disappeared. My quest marker to find 2 two-way radios still points to the garage, but the foreman is gone. Does anybody know what happened and how can I fix this?

[BeerBeer]

A hard-to-reproduce bug of some sort, I think. Once all of the NPCs in the refugee center disappeared on me. But that happened only that one time among the dozens of times I’ve played.

The quest marker, in turn, never moves after it’s set once. I learned this by tracking a Jabberwock in the game - the marker will stick to that one map square but the Jabberwock can run fast away and go after other animals.