SCP-020 — SCP-020 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-020 Keter ~ medium confidence

SCP-020

Expected annual

$6.5M

One-time setup

$70.0M

Annual recurring

$6.1M

Personnel

Initial capital costs are dominated by specialized sealed containment, robotics and a large contingency reserve, producing a multi‑ten‑million-dollar startup; recurring annual operations (staff, energy, maintenance, research and standby response) run in the mid‑single millions.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $70.0M

Contingency Reserve $55.0M

[#28] Insurance-like contingency reserve for catastrophic containment failure (capital set-aside; midpoint of recommended fund range).

Facilities $5.0M

[#1] Construction of sealed containment suite (airlock, negative-pressure room, sealed walls/floor, dedicated HVAC with HEPA and humidity control); BSL-4+/fungal sealing and redundancy; conservative midpoint estimate.

Equipment $4.2M

[#2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9] Custom sealed cultivation chambers, robotics/remote manipulators, hermetic imaging systems, initial digital storage/archiving, autoclave + incinerator, and BSL-5 suits procurement (summed midpoints).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $3.2M

[#6, #19] Specialized imaging/microscopy lab plus initial R&D program setup (detection, antifungal research, genomics); summed initial program and lab buildout midpoints.

Incident Response Units $1.8M

[#21] Purchase of mobile containment trailers/portable incinerators and PPE caches (per-unit purchase, conservative midpoint for a small fleet acquisition).

Secure Data Systems $325K

[#25] Hardened/air-gapped backups, secure comms and forensic-grade archival storage initial setup (midpoint).

Backup Power $300K

[#8] Backup generators, UPS and initial fuel/reserve purchase; initial capital cost (midpoint).

Initial Training $100K

[#18] Initial staff training, suit certification and drills (one-time setup cost).

Secure Transport Initial $60K

[#24] Initial purchase of sealed, temperature/humidity-controlled certified transport containers and courier protocol implementation (midpoint).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $6.1M/yr

Staff Wages $2.1M/yr

[#11, #12] Salaries for core containment scientists/engineers/technicians and security/decon/medical personnel (summed midpoints for both staff groups).

Research And Monitoring $1.0M/yr

[#20] Ongoing research funding, trials and material testing (midpoint recurring R&D budget).

Incident Response Standby $600K/yr

[#21] Standby/maintenance costs for mobile response units and readiness (midpoint of standby cost range).

Community Monitoring $500K/yr

[#26] Community mitigation and monitoring program (surveillance of civilian housing, public-health liaisons, photo analysis; midpoint).

Facilities Maintenance $380K/yr

[#13, #29] Daily surveillance integrity checks/camera maintenance plus ongoing HVAC/filter/seal maintenance, certification and vendor contracts (summed midpoints).

Energy And Utilities $325K/yr

[#14] Energy costs for continuous negative pressure, humidity control, robotics and surveillance (midpoint annual estimate).

Cover Story And Legal $275K/yr

[#30] Public-health coordination, retainers, classified briefings and liaison contracts (recurring cover/legal coordination; midpoint).

Supplies And Consumables $250K/yr

[#10, #15] Routine PPE consumables, suit maintenance parts and lab reagents/sterile media/culture supplies (summed midpoints).

Logistics And Transport $210K/yr

[#16, #24] Waste disposal contracts/hazardous materials transport plus recurring secure transport container maintenance/recurring courier costs (summed midpoints).

Occupational Health $125K/yr

[#17] Occupational health surveillance, periodic testing, fungal exposure assays and counseling (midpoint recurring estimate).

Regular Audits And Simulations $125K/yr

[#27] Regular containment audits, external reviews and breach simulations (midpoint recurring estimate).

Secure Data Maintenance $125K/yr

[#25] Ongoing maintenance, secured backups rotation and secure-comms upkeep for forensic-grade archives (midpoint recurring estimate).

Training And Certification $100K/yr

[#18] Ongoing refresher courses, suit re-certification and operator training (recurring portion referenced by initial training note).

Per Outbreak Operations $0/yr

[#22] Per-outbreak field operations costs (quarantine, property decontamination/incineration, mass-morgue). Set to 0 here and modeled explicitly in adverse scenarios due to extreme variability.

Legal And Cover Contingency $0/yr

[#23] Large legal/PR/cover payments tied to major incidents; set to 0 in baseline recurring and modeled in incident scenarios due to high variability.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $6.1M/yr

94.0% probability / year

Normal year with no major outbreak; routine operations, maintenance, research and standby costs only.

no_outbreak routine_operations

🚨 Minor Incident $8.1M/yr

5.0% probability / year +$2.0M vs baseline

Localized outbreak requiring field teams, limited property decontamination and targeted incineration; legal/cover efforts limited.

localized_outbreak field_containment limited_property_incineration

🚨 Major Outbreak $31.1M/yr

1.0% probability / year +$25.0M vs baseline

Town-scale outbreak or containment failure requiring mass remediation, incineration of property, large-scale medical response and intensive legal/cover costs.

town_scale_outbreak mass_decontamination public_exposure

👥 Personnel 29 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist	6	Core mycologists/biologists involved in containment research and monitoring (from #11 staffing estimate).
Engineer / Maintenance	4	Containment engineers and roboticists for HVAC, seals and automation (from #11).
Research Technician / Lab Technician	4	Lab technicians for sample handling, imaging pipelines and routine tasks (from #11).
Security Officer / MTF Agent	11	Round-the-clock armed guards and response personnel (from #12 security staffing estimate).
Medical Officer	1	On-call occupational medicine staff for surveillance and post-exposure care (from #12, #17).
Decontamination Technician	1	Trained decon operator for suit maintenance and decontamination procedures (from #12, #10).
Site Director / Executive Staff	1	Site lead/management oversight for containment program and external coordination.
Administrative Staff	1	Admin/logistics support for contracts, scheduling and liaison tasks.

📋 Confidence Notes

Line items are well-posed with explicit ranges, allowing midpoint estimates, but outbreak-related costs and contingency reserves are highly variable; contingency/reserve choice and scenario probabilities introduce significant uncertainty.

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