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SCP-4870 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-4870
Expected annual
$1.3M
One-time setup
$5.6M
Annual recurring
$1.3M
Personnel
10
Estimated one-time setup is dominated by containment infrastructure and a large contingency reserve (~$5.6M total one-time). Recurring costs (~$1.27M/year) are driven by staff wages, monitoring/IT maintenance, and opportunity/productivity impacts.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $5.6M
Contingency Reserve $2.6M
[#21] One-time contingency / rapid escalation fund (reserve for emergency construction, mass decontamination, or large-scale transfers).
Facilities $1.5M
[#11, #17] One-time capital for specialized anomalous-animal containment (#11) and secure document handling room upgrades (#17).
Immutable Backups Setup $325K
[#3] One-time WORM/tape library or write-once vault hardware and cross-site secure replication setup.
Archival Audit $220K
[#1] Site-wide archival audit: temp staffing, project management, rental/purchase of high-speed scanners and OCR for the audit.
It Security Development $165K
[#2] Development and deployment of unique digital signature / server hardening mechanisms and associated contractor dev work.
Filtering Software Development $130K
[#8] Development and deployment of custom automated filtering/blocking software (keyword/date/context).
Scanning Digitization $120K
[#7] Scan & controlled-access digitalization project for susceptible paper holdings (high-speed scanning, metadata ingest).
Cover Opsec Initial $115K
[#14] Initial cover/OPSEC materials, classified-records management setup, and legal efforts to craft plausible cover materials.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $100K
[#9] Initial lab/data-analysis setup for the memetics/linguistics/herpetology/historical research team.
Forensic Tooling $80K
[#5] Licenses and tooling for forensic reversion suites and manual reversion capabilities.
Long Term Animal Care Initial $70K
[#12] Initial setup for long-term animal care & quarantine (enclosure, furniture, veterinary setup).
Initial Shredding Purge $40K
[#6] Initial contracted secure shredding/incineration and secure temporary storage for purge of archival boxes.
Training Initial $35K
[#15] Initial staff training, SOP creation, and compliance documentation production.
Field Search And Capture Per Incident $28K
[#10] Per-incident field search & capture costs (traps, transport, veterinary check) if SCP-4870-2 is discovered.
Permits Initial $28K
[#13] Initial permit fees, legal coordination and wildlife agency liaison costs.
Equipment $0
[]
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.3M/yr
Staff Wages $758K/yr
[#4, #5, #9, #12, #16] Ongoing salaries: research team, monitoring analysts, digital forensics specialist, animal technician, and on-call/rapid-response premium pay.
Opportunity Cost $175K/yr
[#22] Budget for temporary staff / productivity loss mitigation due to restricted access to historical files (soft cost).
Research And Monitoring $160K/yr
[#3, #4, #8, #18] Continuous document-integrity monitoring software/licenses (DLP/IDS + maintenance), backups maintenance, filtering software maintenance, and cross-site monitoring coordination.
Cover Story And Legal $90K/yr
[#13, #14] Annual legal retainer, liaison, and cover/PR maintenance costs.
Supplies And Consumables $38K/yr
[#6, #20] Ongoing consumables: contracted shredding & storage, PPE, incineration fuel, shipping consumables.
Psychological Support $18K/yr
[#19] Counseling and periodic psychological screening for staff exposed to recurrent anomalies/alterations.
Facilities Maintenance $15K/yr
[#17] Utilities/maintenance for secure document handling rooms and badge/CCTV system upkeep.
Training And Compliance $15K/yr
[#15] Recurring staff training refreshers, drills, and compliance audits.
Logistics And Transport $0/yr
[]
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.3M/yr
90.5% probability / year
Normal year with monitoring, audits, maintenance, and research but no field discoveries or major incidents.
routine_monitoring no_field_discovery no_mass_escalation
🚨 Minor Incident $1.3M/yr
8.0% probability / year +$28K vs baseline
Non-anomalous SCP-4870-2 (gopher tortoise) discovered; requires humane capture, transport, veterinary check, and short-term housing.
gopher_tortoise_discovery field_capture_needed
🚨 Major Incident $2.8M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$1.5M vs baseline
SCP-4870-2 is located and displays anomalous/hazardous properties, requiring construction of specialized containment and initial operation.
anomalous_animal_discovery specialized_containment_required
🚨 Catastrophic Breach $4.4M/yr
0.5% probability / year +$3.1M vs baseline
Mass infection/escalation of archives or widespread propagation requiring use of contingency reserve, emergency construction, and mass remediation.
mass_archive_infection rapid_spread
👥 Personnel 10 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist 4 [#9] Memetics/linguistics/herpetology/archival research team (salaries included in staff_wages).
Research/Data Analyst 1 [#4] Document-integrity analyst (triage of alerts, included in staff_wages).
Digital Forensics Specialist 1 [#5] 0.5–1 FTE indicated; modeled as 1 FTE in recurring staff_wages.
Animal Technician 1 [#12] 0.5–1 FTE animal tech for long-term care/quarantine; modeled as 1 FTE here.
Security Officer / MTF Agent (on-call) 2 [#16] On-call rapid response/security staff for field and document incidents; premium/on-call costs included in staff_wages.
Administrative Staff / Project Manager 1 [#1] Ongoing administrative coordination and audits (project management referenced in archival audit).
📋 Confidence Notes
Line items and ranges were explicit in analyst notes, permitting midpoint estimates, but several items (specialized containment, contingency, frequency of discovery) have wide ranges and structural uncertainty.
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