← SCP Cost Explorer Read on SCP Wiki ↗
SCP-181 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-181
Expected annual
$1.5M
One-time setup
$1.1M
Annual recurring
$1.4M
Personnel
12.25
Initial capital/setup costs are ~1.09M driven by contingency reserve, legal cover infrastructure and containment retrofit; recurring annual costs are ~1.435M driven by salaries (security + research), incident readiness, and legal/cover retainer.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.1M
Contingency Reserve $500K
[#20] One-time contingency reserve for unforeseen probabilistic cascades (reserved, available as-needed).
Legal Cover Setup $300K
[#12] One-time establishment of cover infrastructure, fake corporate shells, legal foundations for rapid response.
Facilities $120K
[#9] Deterministic test chamber / containment retrofit (engineering, materials, installation).
Equipment $112K
[#3, #10, #11, #13, #14, #17] Camera/install ($12k), de-randomization hardware ($25k), communications setup ($8k), incident-team gear ($45k), server/software ($12k), IT/network one-time ($10k).
Initial Research And Lab Setup $40K
[#8] Research equipment and instrumentation (high-speed cameras, deterministic test rigs, RNG machines, data acquisition hardware).
Sop Creation And Development $15K
[#15] SOP creation and initial training materials development.
Policy Opportunity Cost $0
[#21] Non-monetary policy restriction on exploiting SCP-181 (opportunity cost; intentionally not quantified).
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.4M/yr
Staff Wages $988K/yr
[#2, #7, #3, #14, #11, #17, #19] All FTE salary+benefits: security guards (3.5 FTE ≈ $245k), research team (PI + 2 researchers + 1 tech ≈ $550k), surveillance analyst (~$60k), data analyst (~$35k), compliance officer (~$20k), IT/security admin (~$18k), administrative staff (0.75 FTE ≈ $60k).
Incident Response Readiness $160K/yr
[#13] MTF / rapid-response maintenance, training, specialized gear and on-call stipends (~$160k/yr).
Cover Story And Legal $150K/yr
[#12] Legal/cover-up retainer and rapid-response fund for public exposures (~$150k/yr).
Emergency Medical Contingency $50K/yr
[#6] Emergency medical contingency reserve for trauma, medevac, ICU (~$50k/yr).
Facilities Maintenance $43K/yr
[#1, #10] Dedicated dorm allocation & maintenance (~$40k/yr) and de-randomization enforcement/maintenance (~$3k/yr).
Supplies And Consumables $20K/yr
[#5, #8, #16] Basic medical & mental-health care (~$8k/yr), research consumables/calibration (~$10k/yr), consumables (food/clothing) (~$2k/yr).
Research And Monitoring $18K/yr
[#15, #18] Recurring non-personnel research/monitoring ops: refresher training & audits (~$6k/yr) and ethical oversight/regulatory compliance reviews (~$12k/yr). (Analyst salaries and primary monitoring personnel are in staff_wages.)
Logistics And Transport $6K/yr
[#4] Monthly rotation logistics (transport, processing, admin) ~$500/move × 12.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.4M/yr
94.0% probability / year
Normal year with routine monitoring, no major incidents or exposures.
no_unusual_events routine_operations
🚨 Minor Incident $1.6M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$200K vs baseline
Localized incident (medical emergency, small public exposure, limited legal/PR response) requiring MTF dispatch and additional legal/PR spending.
local_public_exposure single-person_injury small_mtfn_deployment
🚨 Major Cascade $4.4M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$3.0M vs baseline
Low-probability but high-impact probabilistic cascade affecting public systems causing major property damage, large-scale legal/cover operations and extended MTF mobilization.
probability_cascade widespread_public_exposure extended_mtfn_mobilization
👥 Personnel 12.25 total
Role Count Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent 3.5 [#2] 3.5 FTE guards for continuous coverage + escorts (salaries included in staff_wages).
Senior Researcher / PI 1 [#7] Principal Investigator for monitoring & experiments (salary included in staff_wages).
Research Scientist 2 [#7] Two research scientists on the small dedicated team (salaries included in staff_wages).
Lab Technician 1 [#7] One lab technician supporting experiments and equipment (salary included in staff_wages).
Surveillance Analyst 1 [#3] Analyst for continuous video monitoring and review (salary included in staff_wages).
Data Analyst 1 [#14] Analyst for logging/analysis/archiving (salary included in staff_wages).
Compliance Officer 1 [#11] Small compliance officer for communications/mail restrictions and monitoring (salary included in staff_wages).
Engineer / IT Administrator 1 [#17] IT/network isolation and security admin (salary included in staff_wages).
Administrative Staff 0.75 [#19] 0.75 FTE legal/administrative staff for paperwork, rotation processing, and coordination (salary included in staff_wages).
📋 Confidence Notes
Many line-item estimates are supplied by the analyst and are specific, but long-tail risk (probability effects) and local wage/overhead variation introduce uncertainty; contingency/reserve sizing and incident probabilities are judgment calls.
← SCP-180 ↑ All SCPs SCP-182 →