SCP-5029 — SCP-5029 | Cost Breakdown

Read on SCP Wiki ↗

SCP-5029 Keter ~ medium confidence

SCP-5029

Expected annual

$5.8M

One-time setup

$14.4M

Annual recurring

$5.6M

Personnel

Initial capitalization is dominated by a large containment/reserve fund and secure infrastructure buildout (~$14.4M one-time). Recurring costs are staff-, legal-, and cyber‑ops heavy, totaling roughly $5.56M/year driven by payroll, legal/takedown/insurance, and ongoing R&D/monitoring.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $14.4M

Containment Reserve Fund $10.0M

[#18] Large-scale remediation / contingency reserve fund for catastrophic spread and emergency buyouts/rebuilds.

Equipment $1.2M

[#2, #3, #6, #7, #8, #13, #17, #21] SAN/NAS + tape library, network/firewall appliances, forensic workstations & imaging hardware, redundant spare devices, degausser/shredder, SIEM appliances, transport vehicle(s), MDM/initial endpoint hardware.

Settlement Pool $1.0M

[#19] One-time settlement/indemnity pool for potential major third-party settlements.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $725K

[#12, #25, #26] One-time R&D/lab project setup for detection/containment tooling, forensic recovery project budgets, and behavioral/psycholinguistic study setup.

Facilities $480K

[#4, #5] Containment/testing cell construction (Faraday cage, HVAC, power conditioning) and secure item locker/vault installation.

Web Crawler Development $400K

[#1] Development and secure hardware for HELLO-FRIEND crawler, secure ingestion appliance, hardened servers, QA and isolation.

Public Relations Emergency Fund $200K

[#15] One-time emergency PR/cover expenditure for high-visibility incidents.

Third Party Project Pool $200K

[#11] One-time budget for outsourced reverse-engineering or project-level contractor work.

Clearance Initial $90K

[#24] Initial clearance/background check costs for new staff assigned to SCP-5029 duties.

Ups Replacement $60K

[#22] UPS/battery replacement capital (3–5 year cycle) for containment hardware.

Emergency Takedown Fund $50K

[#14] One-time emergency takedown spend for high-priority incidents.

Documentation Setup $30K

[#27] Secure paper/document archive setup, tamper-evident printing and classified archival systems.

Psych Program Setup $15K

[#20] One-time setup for staff psychological support and monitoring program.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $5.6M/yr

Staff Wages $1.8M/yr

[#9] Payroll for lead researcher, researchers/engineers, sysadmins, forensic analysts, and guards (includes benefits/clearance overhead).

Cover Story And Legal $1.6M/yr

[#14, #15, #19] Ongoing legal/takedown operations, PR/cover story management contracts, and insurance/legal indemnity premiums/contingency.

Research And Monitoring $665K/yr

[#12, #25, #26, #13] Ongoing R&D budget, forensic follow-on research, behavioral study operations, and SIEM/analysis storage costs.

Monitoring Oncall $300K/yr

[#10] 24/7 monitoring staff overtime, on-call premiums, and incident response rotation costs.

Language Moderation $275K/yr

[#16] Multilingual human moderation team to validate takedowns and execute content removal.

Web Crawler Maintenance $180K/yr

[#1] Recurring hosting, updates, maintenance and monitoring costs for HELLO-FRIEND ingestion pipeline.

Logistics And Transport $125K/yr

[#17] Operating costs for secure transport vehicles, couriers/guards, fuel, and per-incident transport fees.

Third Party Retainer $125K/yr

[#11] Annual retainer for external cyber incident response and specialized reverse engineering support.

Network Support $72K/yr

[#3] Support, updates, and licensing for firewall/app proxy appliances and network segmentation.

Power And Environmental $70K/yr

[#22] Electricity, HVAC, and routine environmental maintenance for servers and containment systems.

Training And Mdm $60K/yr

[#21] Refresher training, audits, and ongoing MDM enforcement costs.

Miscellaneous Contingency $50K/yr

[#28] Small equipment purchases, travel, and unforeseen experiment materials.

Facilities Maintenance $40K/yr

[#4, #5] Utilities, HVAC, tamper sensors, vault/climate control maintenance for containment cell and storage locker.

Forensic Licensing $35K/yr

[#6] Software licensing and support for digital forensics suites (EnCase/FTK/X-Ways/Cellebrite).

Supplies And Consumables $30K/yr

[#23] Media rotation (tapes/SSDs), evidence bags, spare parts, and other consumables.

Spare Device Replacement $30K/yr

[#7] Replacement/refresh of sacrificial air-gapped devices and spare parts.

Clearance Reinvestigation $30K/yr

[#24] Periodic reinvestigation and background audit costs for ~30 staff.

Staff Psych Support $30K/yr

[#20] Recurring counseling and monitoring for personnel exposed to SCP-5029 interactions.

Disposal Fees $25K/yr

[#8] Secure disposal, e-waste contracts, and per-device destruction fees.

Storage Maintenance $10K/yr

[#2] Maintenance, expansion, and tape rotation costs for on-prem archival storage.

Documentation Maintenance $8K/yr

[#27] Ongoing secure printing, archival maintenance, and audit trails.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $5.6M/yr

84.5% probability / year

Normal year with no major incidents; ongoing containment, monitoring, research, and takedown operations continue as planned.

routine_operations no_major_breach

🚨 Minor Incident $5.9M/yr

12.0% probability / year +$300K vs baseline

Localized outbreak or public mention spike requiring extra incident response, contractor time, PR/takedown surge, and device replacements.

localized_infection public_mention_spike small-scale_remediation

🚨 Major Breach $8.1M/yr

3.0% probability / year +$2.5M vs baseline

Widespread infection across consumer systems or a major provider requiring large-scale remediation, legal actions, and settlements.

mass_infection provider_level_spread major_legal_action

🚨 Catastrophic Breach $25.6M/yr

0.5% probability / year +$20.0M vs baseline

Infection of critical infrastructure or cloud providers triggering activation of contingency reserve and nationwide remediation efforts.

critical_infrastructure_infection mass_cloud_contamination

👥 Personnel 20 total

Role	Count	Notes
Senior Researcher / Lead	1	[#9] Lead responsible for program oversight and high-clearance approvals.
Research Scientist / Engineer	3	[#9] Dedicated researchers and engineers for reverse engineering, R&D, and experiments.
Sysadmin / Infrastructure	4	[#9] Sysadmins to maintain isolated networks, servers, and crawler infrastructure.
Forensic Analyst	4	[#9] Digital forensics staff for imaging, analysis, and evidence handling.
Security Officer / Guard	6	[#9] Armed/technical guards for secure transport and site security.
Administrative Staff	2	[#9] Administrative and HR support including clearance management and scheduling.

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide detailed line-item ranges but many items (breach scale, settlement sizes, insurance coverage) are highly variable; estimates use midpoints and conservative contingency assumptions, so overall confidence is medium.

← SCP-5028 ↑ All SCPs SCP-5030 →