SCP-2053 — SCP-2053 | Cost Breakdown

Read on SCP Wiki ↗

SCP-2053 Safe ~ medium confidence

SCP-2053

Expected annual

$166K

One-time setup

$450K

Annual recurring

$160K

Personnel

1.05

Estimated one-time setup costs are approximately $449,500 driven primarily by development of an algorithmic index, secure IT procurement, and local/server infrastructure; recurring annual costs are approximately $160,050 driven by cloud/hosting, ongoing IT/security operations, research activity, and contingency/incident readiness.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $450K

Database Algorithmic Development $200K

[#9] Practical algorithmic/index generator development (compact mapping/hash+seed/on-demand generator) — explicit materialization infeasible; one-time development estimate.

Cloud Vendor Procurement $100K

[#10] Cloud/commercial compute procurement, vendor vetting, NDAs, initial compute credits and procurement setup.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $60K

[#8] Digital forensics and initial characterization (safe parser/viewer development, PDF/PDF-page analysis tools; one-off contractor/engineer effort).

Local Servers Backup $30K

[#11] High-availability local server & backup hardware (servers, RAID, secure racks) for hosting generated index or derived assets.

Equipment $16K

[#2, #3] Secure media pouch/write-block hardware and dedicated air-gapped workstation/hardened reader station (hardware + secure OS/hardening).

It Security Setup $15K

[#7] One-time IT security & logging setup (air-gap appliances, HSMs, secure key storage, logging retention systems).

Legal And Cover $15K

[#16] One-time legal, NDA, and cover-story setup costs (contracts, legal review for vendor engagement).

Facilities $7K

[#1] Containment locker installation (secure locker, sensors, badge/fingerprint access, logging; hardware + installation).

Training Initial $3K

[#6] Initial memetic/information-hazard safety training and protocol setup.

Sealed Backup Flash Drive $2K

[#18] Secure sealed backup/redundant anomalous flash drive hardware and vaulting (policy-dependent; included as allowed option).

Non Anomalous Test Items $500

[#17] Procurement of non-anomalous test cubes and flash drives for calibration/testing.

Ppe $500

[#13] Initial purchase of PPE and small handling shields for physical handling of rotating cube.

Full Materialization Attempt $0

[#23] Explicit attempt to materialize all PDF pages (43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations) is infeasible with current technology; cost effectively infinite — treated as advisory, no finite budget allocated.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $160K/yr

Cloud Contract $50K/yr

[#10] Annual cloud/commercial compute support, specialized vendor SLAs, and cloud service fees if used.

Database Hosting Maintenance $30K/yr

[#9] Hosting and maintenance for algorithmic on-demand index (cloud/local maintenance, resilience, updates).

Incident Response Contingency $20K/yr

[#14] On-call response team budget, drills, and small emergency fund allocation.

Research And Monitoring $12K/yr

[#21, #22] Small-scale experimental runs and records/monitoring of phrase uses and downstream monitoring.

Experimental Budget $10K/yr

[#21] Small research budget for consumables, instrument rental, and experimental runs.

Local Server Ops $8K/yr

[#11] Power, maintenance, and backup rotation costs for local high-availability servers and air-gapped backups.

Audit And Compliance $7K/yr

[#20] Annual audits, compliance checks, memetic safety verification, and independent review.

It Security Operations $6K/yr

[#7] Ongoing IT security operations, logging retention, and access-control maintenance.

Staff Wages $5K/yr

[#4, #5] Monthly Level-2 researcher handling (hourly labor for monthly manipulation) and PI oversight time (0.02–0.05 FTE equivalent).

Cover Story And Legal $3K/yr

[#16] Ongoing legal retainer and cover-story/legal upkeep.

Psychological Monitoring $2K/yr

[#15] Psychological evaluation and monitoring for personnel with access to anomalous document.

Utilities $2K/yr

[#19] Electricity and facility utilities attributable to local compute/work.

Training Refresher $2K/yr

[#6] Annual memetic/information-hazard refresher training and redaction/safe-reading updates.

Phrase Monitoring $2K/yr

[#22] Personnel time and storage cost for tracking phrase uses and subsequent monitoring.

Administrative Overhead $2K/yr

[#24] Small administrative overhead (procurement, expense processing, labels, storage media for logs).

Archival Storage $1K/yr

[#12] Long-term archival of logs, video, and experiment records retention costs.

Ppe Replacement $150/yr

[#13] Annual replacement/replenishment of PPE and small handling aids.

Test Items Replacement $100/yr

[#17] Annual replacement of non-anomalous test cubes and flash drives.

Facilities Maintenance $0/yr

[]

Supplies And Consumables $0/yr

[]

Logistics And Transport $0/yr

[]

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $160K/yr

93.5% probability / year

Normal uneventful year: monthly handling, routine maintenance, hosting and training; no major incidents or large development projects.

routine_operations monthly_handling scheduled_training

🚨 Minor Incident $170K/yr

4.0% probability / year +$10K vs baseline

Small containment/IT incident requiring limited emergency forensics, replacement hardware, staff overtime, and short-term legal/PR support.

unexpected_pdf_corruption minor_hardware_failure small_info_hazard_event

🚨 Research Scaleup $410K/yr

2.0% probability / year +$250K vs baseline

Deliberate decision to fund major development: expanded algorithmic index, heavy compute procurement, and expanded hosting/scale-up for deeper analysis or new features.

strategic_research_decision funded_development_push

🚨 Major Breach $310K/yr

0.5% probability / year +$150K vs baseline

Significant containment/operational incident requiring broad emergency response, external contractors, extended legal action, and replacement/forensics at scale.

containment_breach significant_data_exfiltration legal_exposure

👥 Personnel 1.05 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist (Level-2)	1	[#4] Monthly assigned researcher responsible for monthly handling, logging, and routine experiments (part-time commitment reflected in wage line item).
Principal Investigator / Oversight (Dr. Boone equival.)	0.05	[#5] Oversight/PI time ~0.02–0.05 FTE for approvals, log review, and experiment authorization (costed in staff_wages).

📋 Confidence Notes

Contained, Safe-class object and concrete task list produce moderate confidence in baseline recurring estimates; however the single largest uncertainty is software/cloud development and the infeasibility of full materialization, which creates wide ranges for one-time development and vendor/cloud costs.

← SCP-2052 ↑ All SCPs SCP-2054 →