SCP-3373 — SCP-3373 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-3373 Euclid ~ medium confidence

SCP-3373

Expected annual

$4.7M

One-time setup

$5.2M

Annual recurring

$4.2M

Personnel

One-time startup and buyout expenses are the largest upfront cost (~$5.17M), driven by rights buyouts, reserves and development of takedown tooling; annual recurring costs are substantial (~$4.219M/year) driven by personnel (research, surveillance, monitoring), legal/PR, and hosting/CDN operations.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $5.2M

Public Exposure Reserve One Time $2.0M

[#25] One-time large reserve for worst-case public exposure containment, settlements, retroactive rights purchases and mass suppression buys.

Studio Buyout And Ndas $800K

[#4] Rights purchase/escrow and NDA buyouts (mid-range buyout for master(s) and secrecy agreements).

Research Project Rnd One Time $600K

[#21] One-time R&D project funding for memetic countermeasures, pilot trials and computational experiments.

Contingency Reserve One Time $500K

[#17] Initial contingency/reserve fund for emergency rapid-response, legal freezes and takedown blitzes.

Facilities $450K

[#7, #8, #24] Secure archival build/upgrade, anechoic chamber build and long-term archival redundancy (vaulting, climate control, EMP hardening, multi-site storage).

Web Crawl Takedown Bot $250K

[#1] One-time development of automated crawlers, anti-evasion fingerprinting integration and ops dashboard.

Equipment $155K

[#9, #14, #18] Specialist servers/bandwidth buffer, initial electronic-surveillance hardware setup and covert ops equipment procurement; includes one-time CDN/bandwidth spike buffer.

Safehouse Relocation One Time $125K

[#15] One-time relocation and first-year setup costs if relocating/cooperating with PoI-701 (housing, NDAs, move costs).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $100K

[#6] Lab instrumentation, software licenses and initial memetic research equipment for digital forensics and memetic analysis.

Audio Fingerprint Db $50K

[#2] One-time build of fingerprinting pipeline and initial fingerprint database for episode variants and heckle track.

Vehicle Procurement $40K

[#13] Vehicle purchase for 24/7 covert surveillance operations.

Counter Content Setup $40K

[#11] One-time production/setup costs for counter-content/decoy generation and initial seeding campaigns.

Electronic Surveillance Setup $30K

[#14] One-time setup costs for lawful intercept/wiretapping equipment and storage provisioning.

Training Program Initial $30K

[#20] Initial memetic-safety training program development and initial certification run.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $4.2M/yr

Staff Wages $1.4M/yr

[#6, #10, #13] Salaries for memetic/digital forensics researchers (~$600k), 24/7 covert surveillance agents (6 agents, ~$570k) and monitoring analysts (~$220k).

Public Exposure Annual Reserve $500K/yr

[#25] Annual reserve to respond to scaled exposures (mass PR buys, initial settlements).

Studio Liaison Corporate Influence $300K/yr

[#5] Long-term contracts, PR and corporate liaison retainer inside CBS/Warner for compliance and influence.

Social Media Pr $300K/yr

[#12] Professional PR campaign, narrative management and crisis communications.

Cover Story And Legal $250K/yr

[#3] Retainer and human follow-up legal work for platform takedowns, counter-claims handling and negotiated enforcement.

P2P Monitoring Tooling $200K/yr

[#10] Tooling and platform monitoring subscriptions for continuous P2P/darknet monitoring.

Contingency Fund Annual Topup $200K/yr

[#17] Annual top-up for rapid-response contingency reserve.

Insurance Legal Reserve $200K/yr

[#22] Insurance premiums, legal risk reserves and funds for routine settlements/fines.

Data Center Bandwidth $150K/yr

[#9] Hosting, CDN and bandwidth costs to support takedowns, mirrors and burst capacity for spikes.

Travel Logistics $150K/yr

[#19] Frequent travel to studios, interviews, archive retrievals and field ops (flights, hotels, vehicles).

Research And Monitoring $120K/yr

[#2, #6, #21] Ongoing research expenses, memetic analysis software licenses, simulation compute time and IRB/pilot trial monitoring costs.

Webbot Hosting $72K/yr

[#1] Hosting, maintenance and ops for web-crawl/takedown infrastructure ($6k/month assumed).

Electronic Surveillance Monitoring $72K/yr

[#14] Ongoing telecom fees, monitoring storage and analyst time for wiretap/email/social monitoring.

Safehouse And Protection $60K/yr

[#15] Multiyear protection stipends, supervision and care if PoI cooperates (ongoing yearly support).

Personnel Overhead $60K/yr

[#23] HR, payroll, background checks and security clearance processing overhead.

Medical Care Programs $50K/yr

[#16] Psychiatric care, staff screening program and treatment budget.

Counter Content Seeding $36K/yr

[#11] Ongoing seeding and bandwidth costs to distribute decoy/poisoned content.

Facilities Maintenance $28K/yr

[#7, #8, #24] Ongoing operations for vaulted storage, climate control, EMP-hardening maintenance and anechoic chamber upkeep.

Fingerprint Storage $18K/yr

[#2] Storage and incremental update costs for audio fingerprint DB and hashing indices.

Field Surveillance Running Costs $15K/yr

[#13] Vehicle running costs and field equipment operating expenses for continuous surveillance.

Archival Redundancy Maintenance $12K/yr

[#24] Maintenance for offsite/offsite redundant archives and geographic isolation costs.

Anechoic Maintenance $10K/yr

[#8] Scheduled maintenance and monitoring for controlled playback/testing facilities.

Specialist Equipment Maintenance $10K/yr

[#18] Replacement and consumables for covert ops gear and test-kits.

Training And Certification Recurring $10K/yr

[#20] Recurring refreshers and memetic hazard certification for exposed staff.

Archival Ops $6K/yr

[#7] Yearly operations for vaulted cold storage and access logging.

Supplies And Consumables $0/yr

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Logistics And Transport $0/yr

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⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $4.2M/yr

84.5% probability / year

Normal year with no major public leaks; routine monitoring, takedowns and research operations continue.

no major leak routine takedowns normal investigative tempo

🚨 Minor Incident $4.5M/yr

12.0% probability / year +$300K vs baseline

Localized leak on P2P or a handful of social reposts requiring an emergency takedown blitz and moderate legal action.

targeted torrent swarm coordinated repost campaign

🚨 Major Breach $9.2M/yr

3.0% probability / year +$5.0M vs baseline

Widespread public release requiring large buyouts, mass legal settlements and extended PR buys.

mass leak viral social exposure legal class-action risk

🚨 Catastrophic Breach $54.2M/yr

0.5% probability / year +$50.0M vs baseline

Major global exposure with political/media fallout, requiring extensive settlements, rights purchases and long-term remediation.

platform-wide release mainstream media amplification regulatory/political action

👥 Personnel 12 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist / Memetic Analyst	4	[#6] Senior analysts responsible for audio forensics, memetic risk analysis and modelling (salary pool included in staff_wages).
Security Officer / MTF Agent	6	[#13] Rotating covert surveillance agents for 24/7 watch of PoI-701 and related physical ops (salaries included in staff_wages).
Digital Forensics / Monitoring Analyst	2	[#10] Analysts dedicated to P2P/darknet monitoring, fingerprint matching and takedown operations (salaries included in staff_wages).

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide specific line-item ranges for most costs which improves estimate quality, but many items (studio buyouts, public-exposure costs, legal outcomes) are highly variable and scenario-dependent, so uncertainty remains.

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