How does Fallout 76 compare to Destiny? Are there large hub areas that you can just mess around as a solo in with other players running around? And are there like strikes where you team up with people and fight a boss at the end?
There isn't really a 'starting hub' like in Destiny since the map is so massive and filled with locations. Like
@SimGrindcore said, there's hub locations to the extent that you have crafting benches and item storage and some hubs with NPC vendors and you might see some players around them but because there are so many I wouldn't say there's any hubs where you'll see more than 2-3 players in the same spot. Especially since for item management/crafting you can just fast travel to your camp that you can place anywhere on the map.
Your camp can be used as a trading post where other players can see an overview of the kind of items you're selling on the minimap so I've had players pop into my camp to browse my wares for sale here and there.
But to answer the second part of your question, there are public events that the whole lobby can jump into if they see on the minimap that people are participating and that's the main way to get high quality gear. They're more involved than most public events in the Destiny overworld and some operate like raids with very high level boss fights. Then there's OPs which is basically a more streamlined event that you can run repeatedly and I guess they operate like a Destiny strike. I've had a fair number of event runs with 7-10 players.
One other benefit is you can join public squads freely and get a passive XP boost based on the number of players in your team (up to four) and you can also travel to their camps or directly to the player without paying caps (one of the annoying things about 76 is most locations will charge you the base currency to fast travel to certain locations except for some of the 'hub' locations. So whenever I do events, I'll load my inventory with dropped weapons and just bulk sell them to get enough caps to offset my fast travel costs while profiting from the content I clear, or I'll try to use my squad mates as fast travel points to get me closer walking distance to where I'm trying to go or reduce the cap cost to fast travel there (the cost is based on distance)). So that was a long way of saying it's always a good idea to squad up even if you don't do anything with your squadmates.