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SCP-1764 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SPC-1764
Expected annual
$552K
One-time setup
$183K
Annual recurring
$550K
Personnel
6
Estimated up-front capital and setup costs are modest (~$183,000) driven by vault work, immutable media, and an air-gapped/forensic kit; ongoing annual costs are dominated by staff wages and monitoring at approximately $549,500/year.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $183K
Equipment $73K
[#4, #5, #7, #13, #14] Air-gapped archival server & secure workstations, initial WORM/LTO library purchase, digital integrity system development/integration, forensic imaging & controlled test hardware kit, and initial commercial software licenses.
Incident Response Reserve $60K
[#17] One-time contingency reserve for emergency measures, emergency equipment procurement and secure transport.
Facilities $23K
[#6, #24] Vault construction/upgrade and minor physical segregation/signage/badge logic modifications.
Initial Staff Training $12K
[#2] Initial rollout training and briefings for operations, IT, Theoretics, and records staff (trainer fees and lost staff time).
Sop And Legal Review $10K
[#1] SOP rewrite, legal review and cover-up/classification language to formalize storage/access/reporting procedures.
Offsite Redundancy Setup $5K
[#12] Setup costs for offsite redundancy and disaster recovery (initial provisioning, insured courier setup).
Initial Research And Lab Setup $0
[]
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $550K/yr
Staff Wages $435K/yr
[#9, #10, #11, #20] Theoretics/research team salaries (senior + junior), IT/sysadmin support (fractional FTE), physical security staff for archive access control, and part-time administrative/records management support.
Operational Friction Overhead $30K/yr
[#23] Productivity overhead from extra procedures, verification time and access constraints (modeled as salary %).
Cover Story And Legal $25K/yr
[#19] Ongoing legal counsel and PR contingency budget to maintain secrecy/classification and respond to leaks.
External Audit And Compliance $15K/yr
[#18] Periodic third-party audits and compliance/oversight review fees.
Media Refresh And Hardware Replacement $8K/yr
[#15] Averaged replacement cycle costs for drives/media refresh to avoid data rot (3–5 year cycle averaged).
Research And Monitoring $7K/yr
[#8] Digital integrity checks, key management, periodic forensic imaging and monitoring operations (operator hours and key rotation).
Logistics And Transport $6K/yr
[#12] Annual offsite storage/transport/insurance and insured courier transport for redundant sealed copies.
Media Replenishment $6K/yr
[#5] Media replenishment for WORM/LTO library (tapes/optical media replacement consumables).
Travel And Liaison $4K/yr
[#21] Small travel budget for offsite vault visits, inter-department briefings and liaison.
Annual Refresher Training $4K/yr
[#3] Annual refresher training and onboarding education to prevent accidental edits and enforce change-control.
Software License Renewal $4K/yr
[#14] Annual renewals for forensics, signing/HSM services, and SIEM plugins.
Staff Counseling $3K/yr
[#22] Employee assistance programs, counseling and human-factors mitigation to reduce risky "fixing" attempts.
Facilities Maintenance $2K/yr
[#6] Vault environmental control power and minor facility maintenance (humidity/temperature control).
Supplies And Consumables $2K/yr
[#16] Paper, toner, archival sleeves, labels for printed copies and physical archiving.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $550K/yr
94.4% probability / year
Normal year with routine operations, monitoring, and no major incidents.
routine_operations scheduled_maintenance
🚨 Minor Incident $570K/yr
5.0% probability / year +$20K vs baseline
Localized incident such as accidental editing attempts, partial data corruption, or a small integrity failure requiring overtime and emergency imaging.
accidental_edit localized_data_loss
🚨 Major Breach $700K/yr
0.5% probability / year +$150K vs baseline
Widespread corruption of master files or backups requiring large-scale forensic recovery, replacement of media, extended audits and legal actions.
systemic_backup_failure widespread_file_reformatting
🚨 Political Exposure $950K/yr
0.1% probability / year +$400K vs baseline
Leak or external exposure requiring major legal defense, prolonged PR campaigns, and potential settlement or large-scale information control operations.
public_leak oversight_investigation
👥 Personnel 6 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist 2 [#9] One senior researcher and one junior researcher for Theoretics/anomaly research and oversight.
IT / Sysadmin 1 [#10] Fractional FTE sysadmin/helpdesk to maintain air-gapped systems, imaging and backups (modeled as 1 FTE equivalent).
Security Officer / MTF Agent 2 [#11] Two access-control/security personnel for archive access and audits (scheduling may vary by site).
Administrative Staff 1 [#20] Part-time records management/clerical support (0.25–0.5 FTE equivalent modeled as 1 headcount).
📋 Confidence Notes
Many cost items are well-scoped (hardware, media, staffing) but ranges are wide and depend on program design (integrated fractional FTEs vs dedicated program). Uncertainty in incident likelihoods and staffing mixes yields medium confidence.
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