SCP-2268 — SCP-2268 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-2268 Safe ~ medium confidence

SCP-2268

Expected annual

$2.2M

One-time setup

$180K

Annual recurring

$2.2M

Personnel

One-time setup costs are modest (primarily webcrawler development, initial takedown, and lab setup ~ $180k). Recurring annual costs are dominated by staff wages, quarantine/medical monitoring, vendor coordination, and incident contingency funds (~ $2.17M/year).

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $180K

Webcrawler Development $75K

[#4] One-time development and testing of evasive webcrawlers/scanners tuned to find clones/mirrors and fetch content.

Domain Sinkhole Takedown $30K

[#1] Registrar/legal action, sinkholing, covert payments as needed (one-time initial takedown estimate).

Forensic Initial Study $25K

[#16] Initial forensic/chemical/microbiological analysis project budget (one-time study).

Training And Sop Development $20K

[#22] Initial development of SOPs, training package, and compliance materials (one-time development cost).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $15K

[#8] Secure air-gapped test workstations / lab buildout (2–6 stations + peripheral security hardware).

Facilities $10K

[#24] One-time UPS/HVAC and minor lab physical modifications/installations (estimated midpoint).

Equipment $5K

[#9] Initial purchase of disk drives and external drive attachments/spares (20–100 units).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $2.2M/yr

Staff Wages $720K/yr

[#6, #7, #19] Monitoring analysts (2–4), Level-3 researcher time (0.5–1.0 FTE), and physical security staff (4–8 guards) salaries/benefits.

Quarantine And Isolation $350K/yr

[#13] Secure quarantine costs for exposed subjects (per-week quarantines annualized based on moderate testing tempo).

Research And Monitoring $345K/yr

[#14, #16, #17, #18] Recurring research program funding, ongoing forensic assays, medical monitoring (EEG/MRI/clinical visits), and secure data storage/backups.

Cover Story And Legal $300K/yr

[#20, #21] Incident response/remediation retainer and cover-up / public relations / legal contingency budget (annual allocation).

Av Vendor Coordination $150K/yr

[#3] Antivirus signature creation/distribution and vendor coordination (retainers/payments/legal/technical coordination).

Webcrawler Hosting Ops $72K/yr

[#5] Hosting, bandwidth, storage, and operational costs for continuous crawler operation and content retrieval.

Dns And Cert Coordination $60K/yr

[#2] Ongoing DNS/ISP blacklisting, national CERT coordination, legal liaison and repeated takedown requests.

Logistics And Transport $50K/yr

[#12] D-class handling, transport, per-experiment security costs and logistics (annualized estimate).

International Takedown Fund $50K/yr

[#25] Per-incident budget for international domain reappearances / cross-border takedowns (annual allocation).

Amnestic And Memory Sanitation $25K/yr

[#15] Occasional amnestic use and post-week memory sanitation contingencies (per-use costs annualized).

Counseling And Aftercare $25K/yr

[#23] Counseling and psychological aftercare per exposed personnel (annualized incident-driven cost).

Supplies And Consumables $10K/yr

[#11] Bread for tests, safe disposal of contaminated food/hardware, and low-cost consumables for routine experiments.

Forensic Assays Recurring $10K/yr

[#16] Ongoing chemical/microbiological assays and lab consumables for analysis of 'downloafed' toast/hardware.

Training And Audits Recurring $10K/yr

[#22] Annual refreshers, tabletop exercises, and compliance audits.

Facilities Maintenance $7K/yr

[#24] Routine maintenance, minor repair, and electricity/HVAC operational costs (electricity estimated ~$2k–$5k/yr included).

Data Storage $5K/yr

[#18] Secure encrypted archives, backups, and storage for page images, logs, and surveillance video.

Hardware Replacement $3K/yr

[#10] Replacement of damaged drives and peripheral hardware due to 'bread insertion' damage (annualized estimate).

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $2.2M/yr

82.5% probability / year

Normal year with routine monitoring, experiments at moderate tempo (~50 tests/year), no large public leaks or major incidents.

routine_monitoring moderate_testing_tempo no_public_leak

🚨 Minor Incident $2.3M/yr

15.0% probability / year +$125K vs baseline

Limited reappearance or small-scale leak requiring extra takedown, limited legal/PR response, and additional quarantines.

new_clone_detected limited_information_leak small-scale exposure

🚨 Major Breach $3.2M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$975K vs baseline

Significant public discovery or large-scale internal leak causing mass quarantines, large legal actions, accelerated amnestic/decontamination and heavy PR response.

public_discovery mass_exposure litigation_and_media

🚨 Political Exposure $4.7M/yr

0.5% probability / year +$2.5M vs baseline

High-profile exposure involving cross-jurisdictional political fallout, major lawsuits, and large-scale cover-up expenses.

high_profile_leak government_scrutiny class_action_litigation

👥 Personnel 10 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist (Level-3)	1	[#7] Senior researcher (0.5–1.0 FTE) responsible for L3 approvals and oversight.
Research Analyst (web/security)	3	[#6] Full-time analysts to review crawler hits, validate domains, approve actions and perform safety checks (2–4 analysts).
Security Officer / MTF Agent	6	[#19] Onsite physical security/guards for 24/7 coverage (4–8 guards included in staffing estimate).

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide detailed line items, allowing a coherent budget, but wide estimate ranges (legal/jurisdictional variability, testing tempo, and incident severity) produce moderate confidence; many recurring costs scale strongly with number of experiments and leak severity.

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