SCP-4970 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-4970
Expected annual
$2.6M
One-time setup
$1.4M
Annual recurring
$2.5M
Personnel
22
Initial setup (building purchase, secure refurbishment and equipment) is the primary one-time expense (~$1.4M). Recurring costs are dominated by staff wages for security and research, plus a contingency fund, resulting in ~ $2.54M/year ongoing.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.4M
Facilities $880K
[#1, #3] Purchase of building (title transfer/closing/remediation) and site-secure refurbishment/containment room outfitting (reinforced door, soundproofing, partial Faraday/shielding, badge access).
Equipment $265K
[#5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #18, #20, #23] Electronic security hardware (CCTV, badge readers, recorders), telecommunications isolation/emulation hardware, kill-switch/power-control hardware, high-fidelity recording/forensic capture, specialized acoustic capture hardware, initial computing/storage purchase, UPS/generator, initial compute/instrument investment, and initial archiving hardware.
Decommissioning Fund $75K
[#28] Reserved one-time fund for long-term decommissioning/disposal, sanitization, archive and legal closure if required.
Legal Cover One Time $60K
[#14] One-time legal and cover-story setup: bankruptcy narrative, shell formation, initial filings and legal work to establish the facade.
Severance Payouts $50K
[#15] Severance/payouts/relocation for dismissed employees under the cover story.
Amnestic Initial Administrations $30K
[#13] Initial round of amnestic administrations and associated medical administration costs for ~10 employees (one-time).
Training Initial $30K
[#26] Initial development of training, protocol creation and tabletop exercises (one-time development cost).
Screening Initial $25K
[#16] Initial psychological screening, security clearances and background checks for ~20 personnel (one-time vetting costs).
Initial Research And Lab Setup $0
[]
Composite First Year Estimate $0
[#29] Illustrative composite total in analyst notes—this entry is a reference (not double-counted) summarizing the analyst's first-year range.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $2.5M/yr
Staff Wages $1.9M/yr
[#4, #11, #12, #13] Salaries/benefits for 24/7 security coverage (8 FTE), core research team (senior researcher, telecom engineers, linguists, data scientist, lab tech), communications operators/session controllers (24/7 operators), and medical retainer costs.
Contingency Fund $300K/yr
[#22] Annual reserved contingency/incident response fund for breach investigations, emergency amnestic administrations, legal defense, or unplanned anomalous expenses.
Research And Monitoring $245K/yr
[#9, #10, #20, #21, #23, #26, #27] Ongoing software licenses and analysis (acoustic/software), storage & backup replacement costs, computational linguistics R&D/ML resources, external consultant/testing budgets, long-term archival retention, recurring training refreshers, and oversight/audit costs.
Facilities Maintenance $54K/yr
[#2, #5, #6, #17, #18] Property taxes and insurance, electronic security maintenance/licensing, telecom interface maintenance, utilities/janitorial/maintenance, and backup power fuel/maintenance.
Cover Story And Legal $35K/yr
[#14, #24] Ongoing legal, filings, shell-corporation maintenance and low-key public relations/deception upkeep.
Supplies And Consumables $12K/yr
[#19] Consumables and PPE: lab supplies, batteries, cabling, replacement microphones, medical consumables.
Training And Exercises $12K/yr
[#26] Annual refreshers, drills and protocol updates for safe interaction and session control.
Logistics And Transport $10K/yr
[#25] Vehicles/transport lease and maintenance for staff transfer, emergency movement and equipment shipping.
Screening Recurring $5K/yr
[#16] Periodic re-checks and continuous monitoring for cleared personnel (recurring background/psych screening).
Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $2.5M/yr
94.0% probability / year
Normal operational year with no major incidents; routine research and containment operations.
routine operations scheduled sessions only no security incidents
🚨 Minor Incident $2.7M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$200K vs baseline
Localized incident (unauthorised conversation or leakage) requiring incident response, extra amnestics, consultant forensics and legal PR response.
unauthorized session minor leak requiring amnestics targeted media inquiry
🚨 Major Breach $3.7M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$1.2M vs baseline
Significant containment compromise or public exposure requiring major incident response, large-scale amnestics, extended legal defense and replacement equipment/forensics.
public exposure large-scale leak multi-agency involvement
👥 Personnel 22 total
Role Count Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent 8 24/7 on-site guards (8 FTE to cover shifts/leave) per analyst note.
Research Scientist / Senior Researcher 1 Senior researcher to lead linguistics/telecom research.
Engineer / Telecom Engineer 2 Telecommunications engineers for ISDN isolation, emulation and hardware maintenance.
Research Scientist / Linguist 2 Linguists/comparative phonologists for dialect analysis.
Data Scientist / ML Specialist 1 ML specialist for computational linguistics and model training.
Lab Technician 1 Hands-on technician to assist experiments and maintain recording hardware.
Communications Operator / Session Controller 5 24/7 operators to initiate/record sessions and enforce protocols (4–6 suggested; midpoint used).
Medical Officer 1 Medical staff/amnestic administrator (retainer/on-site presence as needed).
Administrative Staff 1 Administrative/legal liaison for cover story maintenance and site administration.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide detailed line-items and ranges, allowing reasonable scoping, but many items (site price, staffing level, research ambition) have wide ranges and some operational uncertainty; therefore medium confidence.
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