← SCP Cost Explorer Read on SCP Wiki ↗
SCP-5019 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-5019
Expected annual
$5.8M
One-time setup
$2.9M
Annual recurring
$5.4M
Personnel
24
Upfront capital costs are moderate (~$2.85M) for secure storage, crawler development, and research setup; recurring annual operations dominate at roughly $5.38M/yr driven by staff wages, continuous monitoring, legal/PR, and cybersecurity. Major-virality events can increase single-year costs into the tens of millions.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $2.9M
Crawler Development $700K
[#2] One-time development, QA and deployment of advanced global web-crawlers, NLP clustering, automated takedown integration and related tooling.
Facilities $600K
[#5] Hardened data vault(s) construction/upgrades (EMP/EMI shielding, climate control, fire suppression, biometric access, tamper-evident seals).
Contingency Seed $500K
[#23, #30] One-time seed for contingency/large-capacity trust to be used only in extreme escalation (government-level intervention / emergency capex).
Equipment $475K
[#4, #14, #26] Secure archival hardware (air-gapped servers, LTO library, HSMs), forensic authentication hardware and signed/read-only archival tooling, content-sanitization / secure viewer development.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $325K
[#1, #16] Lab buildout and research starting materials: memetics lab equipment, software licenses, initial R&D setup for non-amnestic countermeasure experiments.
Training Program Development $150K
[#17] Initial development of containment policy, SOPs, training curricula and tabletop exercise design.
Licensing One Time $100K
[#10] One-time licensing/NDAs/agreements or buyouts with IP holders (initial payments or retainers).
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $5.4M/yr
Staff Wages $1.9M/yr
[#1, #6, #11, #28] Salaries and benefits for memetics research team (memeticists/cognitive/ML), content moderators/analysts, outreach/infiltration staff, and on-site security cadre.
Research And Monitoring $700K/yr
[#2, #3, #12, #13, #25] Ongoing crawler/cloud compute costs, bandwidth and object storage, multilingual monitoring and translation contracts, paid content-removal calls, and darknet/torrent monitoring operations.
Cover Story And Legal $600K/yr
[#8, #9, #10, #27] Legal retainers and emergency filings, covert PR/influence operations, licensing retainers, and ongoing public cover narrative creation/maintenance.
Cybersecurity Operations $450K/yr
[#7] SOC analysts, intrusion detection, endpoint protection, tooling, and regular penetration/red-team testing.
Memetic R And D $400K/yr
[#16] Ongoing R&D budget for non-amnestic countermeasures (memetic vaccines/inoculation media), trials, safety protocols and controlled exposure research.
Supplies And Consumables $300K/yr
[#1, #14, #15, #22, #26] Experimental consumables/testing, forensic operational costs, staff protection (PPE and counseling), secure destruction and evidence handling, and maintenance for secure viewers/filters.
Emergency Response Reserve $300K/yr
[#18, #30] Annual replenishment for emergency response funds to cover rapid deployment, ad buys, travel, overtime and expedited hardware in the event of mass-awareness incidents.
Insurance And Covert Funds $150K/yr
[#23] Insurance premiums, covert petty-funds, and modest off-books contingency allocations.
Logistics And Transport $100K/yr
[#20] Secure travel, liaison allowances, and secure transport of physical media.
Staff Recruitment And Turnover $100K/yr
[#29] Recruiting costs, temporary contractors, and replacement buffer for staff lost due to memetic exposure or turnover.
Facilities Maintenance $80K/yr
[#4, #5] Maintenance, tape replacement, climate control, HSM upkeep, and physical vault maintenance.
Hardware Refresh And Depreciation $80K/yr
[#21] Annualized replacement cycle for servers, network gear, and cryptographic hardware (3–5 year refresh amortization).
Archival Migration $60K/yr
[#19] Periodic migration, media refresh schedule and off-site replication costs to avoid bit-rot and obsolescence.
Ethics And Oversight $60K/yr
[#24] Internal review boards, compliance documentation and classified records archiving for legal/ethical oversight.
Training And Exercises $50K/yr
[#17] Annual refresher training, exercises, and taxonomy updates for response teams and analysts.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $5.4M/yr
83.0% probability / year
Normal year with steady monitoring and no major public incidents.
steady monitoring no major leak
🚨 Minor Incident $5.9M/yr
15.0% probability / year +$500K vs baseline
Localized leak or targeted resurgence requiring emergency takedowns, overtime, and temporary scaling of cloud/compute/legal resources.
localized leak viral thread coordinated reposting
🚨 Major Virality $20.4M/yr
2.0% probability / year +$15.0M vs baseline
Widespread mainstream virality requiring national-scale response, government coordination, and massive ad/legal/lobbying expenditure.
mainstream news coverage national memetic spread legislative or agency involvement
👥 Personnel 24 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist (Memetics/Cognitive/ML) 6 [#1, #16] Two memeticists, two cognitive scientists, two ML/data analysts — core research team included in staff wages.
Content Analyst / Moderator 12 [#11, #12, #28] Human moderators, forum liaisons and multilingual analysts for continuous triage and community engagement.
Security Officer / MTF Agent 6 [#6] On-site armed/unarmed guards and supervisor for physical archive/site protection (multiple shifts).
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide many line-item estimates enabling mid-range costing, but memetic behavior, virality frequency, and legal/third-party cooperation introduce uncertainty; ranges for several items are wide.
← SCP-5018 ↑ All SCPs SCP-5020 →