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SCP-364 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-364
Expected annual
$69.8M
One-time setup
$1.3B
Annual recurring
$68.0M
Personnel
96
One-time capital options (from small hitchhiker instruments to flagship missions) drive multihundred-million to multi‑billion upfront costs; ongoing information-control, embedded personnel, covert payments, legal/PR and emergency reserves drive an expected recurring budget on the order of tens of millions per year.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.3B
Flagship Mission $1.0B
[#9] Full flagship-class mission comparable to Galileo/Juno/New Horizons.
Small Spacecraft Mission $150.0M
[#8] Dedicated small spacecraft/microsat mission to Jovian system (optimistic lower-end estimate).
Ground Station Build $100.0M
[#6] Capital cost to build a 34m-class ground station (optional capital path).
Research Endowment $10.0M
[#23] Multi-year research endowment to quietly fund academics and long-term programs.
Hitchhiker Instrument $7.5M
[#7] Cost to place a small hitchhiker instrument/cubesat on a Jupiter-bound mission.
Facilities $3.0M
[#17] Secure operations center build-out, SCIFs and EMP-hardened rooms.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $1.0M
[#11, #19] HPC/hardware/software & initial materials/contracts/standards.
Embedded Recruitment And Infiltration $1.0M
[#2] Recruitment, identity fabrication, relocation, training and initial infiltration costs for ~60 embedded assets.
Equipment $750K
[#10, #13] Specialized analysis equipment/software (#10) and high-end backyard observatory rigs for influence (#13).
Cyber Infrastructure $750K
[#5] One-time secure servers, lab build and offensive/defensive tooling.
Data Redaction System $300K
[#18] One-time development & deployment of redaction/ingestion/logging systems.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $68.0M/yr
Covert Influence Fund $20.0M/yr
[#3] Recurring contingency payments, incentives, bribes and hush funds to steer telemetry/releases and silence leaks.
Staff Wages $16.9M/yr
[#1, #5, #10, #12] Salaries/benefits for ~60 embedded assets (#1), cyber-ops team (#5), scientific analysis team (#10), and amateur-monitoring staff (#12).
Emergency Response Fund $10.0M/yr
[#15] Rapid-response legal/relocation/settlement/witness management reserve.
Cover Story And Legal $9.5M/yr
[#4, #14, #20] Legal retainers/settlement reserves (#4), PR/disinformation operations and grants (#14), and insurance/financial escrow/auditing (#20).
Diplomacy And Foreign Liaison $7.5M/yr
[#16] Covert liaison, diplomatic channels, technical exchanges and influence with foreign space agencies.
Research Endowment Program $2.0M/yr
[#23] Annual funding for PhD/postdoc programs and long-duration instrument support (alternative to full endowment).
Logistics And Transport $500K/yr
[#22] International travel, equipment shipping, customs, clandestine meeting logistics and office overhead.
Ground Station Leasing $500K/yr
[#6] Leasing time on deep-space telemetry/ground-station networks (baseline leasing approach).
Facilities Maintenance $350K/yr
[#17] Secure facility operations, physical security and maintenance.
Research And Monitoring $350K/yr
[#11, #12] Recurring HPC/cloud modelling costs (#11) and non-wage monitoring tools/subscriptions relating to amateur monitoring (#12).
Supplies And Consumables $175K/yr
[#19] Recurring calibration, rare-element standards and replacement instrumentation.
Training And Opsec $125K/yr
[#21] Ongoing OPSEC, counterintelligence, polygraphs, training exercises and travel.
Data Redaction Ops $100K/yr
[#18] Recurring storage, ops and maintenance for redaction and distributed backups.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $68.0M/yr
94.0% probability / year
Normal year with no major public exposure or decision to fund a dedicated mission; ongoing suppression, monitoring and program operations only.
no_public_leak normal_monitoring routine_operations
🚨 Minor Incident $73.0M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$5.0M vs baseline
Localized leak or amateur publication requiring rapid legal, PR and witness-response expenditures beyond baseline reserves.
amateur_disclosure media_pickup small_probe_data_leak
🚨 Dedicated Mission Required $223.1M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$155.0M vs baseline
Containment or research imperative forces funding of a dedicated small spacecraft mission (microsat/smallsat) to directly observe SCP-364, incurring large one-time mission costs.
suppression_failure strategic_decision_for_direct_observation unambiguous_public_threat
👥 Personnel 96 total
Role Count Notes
Embedded Asset (cover identity) 60 [#1] ~60 embedded personnel placed in agencies/private companies (salaries/stipends/hush payments included in staff wages).
Research Scientist / Analyst 20 [#10] Scientific analysis team (astronomers, spectroscopists, data scientists, xenolinguists) totaling ~15–25 FTEs.
Cyber Operations 12 [#5] Cyber-operations team for monitoring, offensive/defensive activity and secure comms.
Amateur Monitoring Analyst 4 [#12] Team dedicated to monitoring amateur astronomy community and outreach/engagement.
📋 Confidence Notes
Estimates are based directly on analyst-provided ranges and reasonable midpoints; many line items (covert funds, settlements, and mission costs) are intentionally uncertain and subject to policy choices, producing moderate confidence.
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