I barely ever encounted them though, maybe it's cause I take the western road or maybe they're killed by rangers/legionnaires or something but I barely take notice to them anymore. My brain most likely considered that memory a waste of space and deleted it to make room for more advlt oriented material.

Depending how I started off and who I started with I could last pretty long, either alone, in a small town or as the leader of something (just don't expect silly democratic nonsense).

My regular old self? I would not do any sort of adventuring, so hopefully a little while. I'd probably try to hitch a heavily guarded caravan to Vegas, or go to NCR.

This would be pretty much my entire life in the Mojave
1. Join the NCR
2. Kill a [censored] ton of people
3. Become a Veteran Ranger
4. Kill some more people
5. Die of old age
That would be my awesome life.
I'm going to be joining the marines in a few years so I think I would do pretty good.