SCP-3078 — SCP-3078 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-3078 Neutralized ~ medium confidence

SCP-3078

Expected annual

$13.4M

One-time setup

$753.9M

Annual recurring

$11.2M

Personnel

Initial one-time setup and large contingency reserves dominate one-time costs (~$754M), while annual operations (detection, cyber-ops, insurance, and legal/disinfo) drive recurring costs (~$11.25M/yr). Major incidents (casualties) produce very large additional, mostly one-off, expenditures.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $753.9M

Catastrophic Outbreak Reserve $500.0M

[#30] Worst-case global outbreak contingency reserve (conservative lower-bound $500M).

Victim Compensation Reserve $200.0M

[#15] Recommended contingency fund / reserve for large-scale victim compensation and settlements (conservative $200M).

Insurance Reserve $50.0M

[#22] Recommended available self-insured reserve (conservative lower bound $50M).

Equipment $2.5M

[#1, #3, #6, #7, #21] Webcrawler & ML development (#1 $1,000,000), API/takedown tooling dev (#3 $200,000), offensive tooling initial procurement (#6 $1,000,000), honeypot setup (#7 $50,000), secure on‑prem hardware initial purchase (#21 $200,000).

Amnestic Stockpile $500K

[#12] Initial production/acquisition of amnestic agents and secure pharmaceutical storage.

Reputation Shell Companies $500K

[#28] Setup costs for back-office shell companies, legal structures, bank accounts.

Facilities $250K

[#18] Setup of incident command center, hardened comms and SATCOM fallback.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $225K

[#8, #9] Forensic capture & secure archive hardware and vault (#8 $75,000) plus research lab equipment & image analysis rigs (#9 $150,000).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $11.2M/yr

Cyber Insurance $5.0M/yr

[#22] Cyber-insurance premiums / conservative annual reserve for memetic-level liability (~$5M/yr).

Staff Wages $2.5M/yr

[#4, #9] Rapid-response cyber-ops team salaries and benefits (15 FTE ≈ $2.2M/yr) plus research lab staff (2–4 researchers + 1 lab tech ≈ $300k/yr).

Research And Monitoring $870K/yr

[#2, #3, #7, #27] Crawler/cloud operations ($600k/yr), API/tooling maintenance ($100k/yr), honeypot ops ($20k/yr), media/mirror monitoring & takedown automation ($150k/yr).

Cover Story And Legal $750K/yr

[#10, #16] Legal retainer and liaison with platforms/ISPs (~$250k/yr) plus baseline disinformation/cover operations monitoring (~$500k/yr).

Emergency Surge Contractors $500K/yr

[#5] Budget pool for contracting specialists, overtime, and temporary red-team hires (~$500k/yr).

Offensive Tooling And Exploits $300K/yr

[#6] Annual refresh and operations for covert access capabilities and tool subscriptions (~$300k/yr).

Long Term Research $250K/yr

[#26] External academic/proprietary memetics and epidemiology research fund (~$250k/yr).

Medical Amnestic Maintenance $200K/yr

[#12] Replenishment, training, and administration capacity for amnestics (~$200k/yr).

International Cooperation $200K/yr

[#11] Covert coordination costs with foreign partners and expedited support (~$200k/yr).

Public Health Coordination $150K/yr

[#25] Liaison staffing, reimbursements for first responders, and coordination (~$150k/yr baseline).

Logistics And Transport $100K/yr

[#17] Baseline field response travel, rapid-deployment kits, fuel, and lodging (~$100k/yr).

Training $100K/yr

[#20] Tabletop exercises, drills, red-team simulations (~$100k/yr).

Reputation Shell Companies Maintenance $100K/yr

[#28] Annual upkeep and fees for front companies and legal shells (~$100k/yr).

Facilities Maintenance $75K/yr

[#18] Comms/ops and command center ongoing ops and maintenance (~$75,000/yr).

Forensic Documentation $75K/yr

[#24] Systems and staffing for legally admissible logs, chain-of-custody, and evidence preservation (~$75k/yr).

Personnel Vetting $50K/yr

[#19] Background checks, polygraphs, and continuous monitoring for sensitive staff (~$50k/yr).

Secure Hardware Maintenance $20K/yr

[#21] Maintenance for on-prem hardened servers and air-gapped labs (~$20k/yr).

Forensic Archive Maintenance $10K/yr

[#8] Archive maintenance and secure storage upkeep (~$10k/yr).

Supplies And Consumables $0/yr

[]

Amnestic Administration Per Incident $0/yr

[#13] Per-incident cost for amnestic administration: ~$1,000 per person (example: 3,600 people → $3.6M). Tracked as per-incident expense.

Mortuary Per Incident $0/yr

[#14] Per-incident mortuary/autopsy/body-management: ~$2,500 per decedent (example: ~3,578 civilians → ~$9M). Tracked as per-incident expense.

Disinfo Per Incident $0/yr

[#16] Per-major-incident public cover / disinformation campaign: ~$2,000,000 per major event; baseline activity included above.

Field Response Per Incident $0/yr

[#17] High-intensity incident field logistics: ~$500,000 per high-intensity incident.

Platform Takedown Fee Per Incident $0/yr

[#23] Platform takedown buys / emergency access fees: ~$100k–$500k per large incident.

Public Health Per Incident $0/yr

[#25] Larger incident reimbursements to EMS/police and staged cover investigations: ~$1M+ per large incident.

Archive Purge Per Incident $0/yr

[#29] Archive purge and third-party cache destruction: ~$50k–$200k per major incident.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $11.2M/yr

94.0% probability / year

Normal year with ongoing detection/monitoring, cyber-ops staffing, legal retainers, insurance, and baseline disinfo/reputation maintenance; no major outbreak.

no_detection_of_active_instances routine platform cooperation regular funding/operations

🚨 Minor Incident $11.7M/yr

5.0% probability / year +$435K vs baseline

Localized outbreak requiring targeted surge response, limited amnestic use, modest mortuary and cover operations, and technical takedowns.

small localized SCP-3078 spread several dozen to a few hundred affected partial platform cooperation

🚨 Major Incident $229.1M/yr

1.0% probability / year +$217.8M vs baseline

Large-scale outbreak analogous to documented event (thousands of casualties) requiring mass amnestic administration, mortuary operations, widespread cover-up, and large compensation payouts.

rapid uncontrolled SCP-3078-Kahnert replication large civilian exposure and fatalities insufficient platform cooperation

👥 Personnel 19 total

Role	Count	Notes
Cyber Operations Specialist	9	[#4] Offensive/defensive hackers and automation operators included in the 15-FTE cyber-ops team.
Malware Analyst / Digital Forensics	4	[#4] Forensics and malware analysis positions within the cyber-ops team.
Ops Manager / Coordinator	1	[#4] Incident response manager within the cyber-ops team.
Legal Liaison	1	[#4, #10] Legal/platform liaison embedded in the cyber-ops cell and legal retainer activities.
Research Scientist	3	[#9] Research lab staffing (2–4 researchers) to analyze non-anomalous copies; 3 used as midpoint.
Lab Technician	1	[#9] Lab technician supporting image analysis and forensic capture.

📋 Confidence Notes

Notes provided are detailed and allow approximate budgeting for technical operations and incident response, but per-incident casualty-driven costs and reserve drawdowns are highly uncertain and jurisdiction-dependent; probabilities are judgment calls based on a single historical major event and a neutralized current state.

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