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SCP-4932 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-4932
Expected annual
$656K
One-time setup
$286K
Annual recurring
$627K
Personnel
4.3
One-time startup is moderate (~$285,500) for enclosure, capture, and archival hardware; the dominant recurring cost is staff wages and ongoing archival/storage operations (~$622,000/year). Major risk drivers are full historical backlog ingestion and rare major containment/incident costs.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $286K
Backlog Catch Up $200K
[#15] Reasonable selective catch-up archival plan (compressed review, automated ASR, sampling and curation) estimate; full exhaustive manual ingestion could be multi-million but this entry reflects a practical one-time remediation plan.
Equipment $56K
[#2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #21] Faraday/shielding box, UPS, capture hardware and dedicated workstation, primary on-site NAS/RAID (100–500TB), off-site backup setup (initial setup), and initial cryptographic/signing setup.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $25K
[#13, #14] Initial integration of face/appearance database software and licensing integration work plus non-destructive forensic imaging/vendor scanning (micro-CT/X-ray vendor scan).
Facilities $5K
[#1] Reinforced lockable container, biometric lock, tamper sensors and alarm integration for secure enclosure.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $627K/yr
Staff Wages $300K/yr
[#9] Two dedicated full-time researchers (~$150k each including benefits/site overhead).
Electronics Engineer Salary $120K/yr
[#22] Salary for a specialized electronics/reverse-engineering FTE to support non-destructive analysis and emulator efforts.
Research And Monitoring $70K/yr
[#16, #12] Dedicated research project funding (behavioral/linguistic analysis) and data ingestion/transcription / human QA curation (baseline automated tools + human QA labor).
Supervisory Oversight $30K/yr
[#10] Fractional FTE senior researcher oversight and incident review (10–20% effort).
It Admin Support $25K/yr
[#11] Fractional system administration for archival systems, backups and patching.
Insurance And Contingency $15K/yr
[#18] Program-level insurance and reserved contingency for data loss or emergency replacement.
Cover Story And Legal $10K/yr
[#17] Legal counsel, NDAs, vendor management and cover-story related retainer/annual costs.
Storage Media Refresh $10K/yr
[#7] Regular media replacement/migration and capacity expansion (3–5 year cycle planning expressed as annualized cost).
Face Db Licensing $10K/yr
[#13] Ongoing licensing and maintenance for face/appearance database and visual-search tooling.
Security Allocation $10K/yr
[#19] Site-security pro-rated allocations for transfers, escorts and audits.
Facilities Maintenance $5K/yr
[#1, #3] Ongoing small maintenance on containment locker, biometric systems and UPS service/support.
Logistics And Transport $5K/yr
[#6] Off-site backup rotation, tape/disk transport and storage rotation costs (annual).
Training And Audits $5K/yr
[#20] SOP updates, staff training, compliance audits and chain-of-custody procedures.
Long Term Preservation Annualized $5K/yr
[#25] Periodic migration and format-conversion projects (annualized budget from $5k–25k every 3–7 years).
Psychological And Memetic Support $3K/yr
[#23] Occasional memetic/memetic-safety consultations and psychological screening.
Supplies And Consumables $2K/yr
[#24] Media, labels, gloves, storage boxes and routine consumables.
Data Integrity Services $2K/yr
[#21] Hashing, signing, time-stamping services and HSM/time-stamp operations (recurring).
Electricity And Cooling $1K/yr
[#8] Power and HVAC load for capture workstation and NAS running 24/7.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $627K/yr
85.0% probability / year
Normal year with routine operations, no major incidents or large backlog projects.
routine operations no backlog remediation no hardware failures
🚨 Minor Incident $662K/yr
10.0% probability / year +$35K vs baseline
Hardware failure or small data-loss requiring emergency replacement/repair and overtime.
NAS failure urgent drive replacement emergency vendor services
🚨 Backlog Reindexing $822K/yr
3.0% probability / year +$195K vs baseline
Planned multi-month archival catch-up / reindexing project to process historical footage backlog.
historical archival remediation large-scale manual curation
🚨 Major Breach $1.6M/yr
2.0% probability / year +$995K vs baseline
Serious containment/incident leading to data loss, legal exposure and major emergency response.
containment breach data destruction legal/political exposure
👥 Personnel 4.3 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist 2 [#9] Two dedicated full-time researchers responsible for continuous monitoring and file creation.
Research Supervisor / Senior Researcher 0.2 [#10] Fractional supervisory FTE to review files, maintain SOPs and adjudicate ambiguous instances.
IT / System Administrator 0.3 [#11] Fractional IT/sysadmin support allocated to archival systems and backups.
Data Curator / QA Technician 0.5 [#12] Part-time human QA and curation for automated transcriptions and metadata ingestion.
Electronics Engineer / Reverse Engineer 1 [#22] Specialized personnel for controlled non-destructive analysis or emulator development.
Security Officer (pro-rated) 0.1 [#19] Pro-rated security allocation for escorts, audits and transfers.
Administrative / Legal Liaison (pro-rated) 0.2 [#17] Administrative support and liaison for vendor contact, NDAs and cover-story coordination.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide explicit ranges for most items and a firm staffing requirement, but large uncertainty remains around backlog ingestion cost and optional reverse-engineering choices; estimates use mid-range/operational assumptions.
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