← SCP Cost Explorer Read on SCP Wiki ↗
SCP-5288 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-5288
Expected annual
$33.9M
One-time setup
$146.4M
Annual recurring
$31.4M
Personnel
68
Initial capital/capacity build (hardened sites, containment cells, contingency reserves, and research/tooling) requires large one-time capital on the order of hundreds of millions; ongoing operations (cyber scraping, SOC/MTF staffing, covert assets, legal/black-budget, and research) drive recurring costs in the low tens of millions per year.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $146.4M
Facilities $83.0M
[#11, #12, #33] Includes construction of redundant secure containment cells (2 cells @ ~$1.5M each), initial containment site construction (~$30M), and site-loss/relocation reserve (~$50M).
Acoustic And Blast Contingency Reserve $50.0M
[#22] One-time reserved contingency fund to address catastrophic sonic/blast events, evacuations, and rebuilds.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $11.2M
[#1, #20] ML pipeline & cyber-intel development startup and dedicated research program setup (ML engineers, labeled datasets, initial lab instrumentation) ~ $1.25M + $10M.
Equipment $1.4M
[#28, #34, #21] Initial high-speed sensor arrays and per-cell instrumentation (~$400k), initial communications/content-control tooling (~$500k), and initial archive-deletion tooling/legal relationships (~$500k).
Cyber Ops Tooling Initial $600K
[#3] Initial tooling and exploit development (toolchain, red-team setup, secure codebase) estimated mid-range.
Physical Destruction Initial Tools $200K
[#10] Initial contract/kitting for sanctioned demolition/black-ops methods and equipment readiness.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $31.4M/yr
Staff Wages $7.3M/yr
[#4, #5] SOC/monitoring personnel (12–24 staff) and MTF-799 operational manpower (30–50 members) salaries + benefits; includes on-call operational staff and ML ops support.
Research And Monitoring $3.4M/yr
[#19, #20, #21, #28, #32] Forensic analysis and lab testing budget (~$1M), ongoing research program (~$2M), archive/deletion maintenance (~$200k), sensor data storage (~$72k), and secure audit logging (~$100k).
Facilities Maintenance $2.5M/yr
[#12, #22] Ongoing maintenance for hardened site(s), redundant power/fail-safes, and contingency fund upkeep/interest (~$2M + contingency maintenance).
Covert Corporate Assets And Placement $2.0M/yr
[#6] Program maintaining planted employees/contractors inside retail platforms (10 assets typical @ mid-range ~$2M/yr).
Insurance And Indemnity $2.0M/yr
[#23] Liability/reserve budgeting for covert ops collateral damage and legal defenses (~$2M/yr mid-range).
Contingent Reparations And Hush Settlements $2.0M/yr
[#35] Annual reserve for reparations, settlements and long-term support in the event of serious casualties or leaks.
Cover Story And Legal $1.5M/yr
[#7, #18, #30] Legal takedown operations, PR/false-recall campaigns, international legal/compliance retainers and rapid-response counsel (~$0.5M + $0.5M + $0.5M).
Personnel Insurance And Replacement $1.5M/yr
[#25] Hazard pay, life/disability insurance, recruitment and replacement for casualties/attrition (~$1.5M/yr).
Logistics And Transport $1.0M/yr
[#13] Secure transport, armored courier services, specialized packaging, and international shipment handling (~$1M/yr program budget).
Physical Destruction Ops $1.0M/yr
[#10] Annual contingency and pay-for high-risk demolition/black-ops deployments and associated cover operations (~$1M reserve/ops fund).
Medical Treatment And Emergency $1.0M/yr
[#15] On-call EMT/ER support, trauma care, long-term monitoring and emergency response readiness.
Amnestic Production And Administration $1.0M/yr
[#16] Cost to produce/administer Class-C amnestics, travel for recalls, medical monitoring and staffing for administration (~$1M/yr mid-range).
Black Budget Covert Payments $1.0M/yr
[#29] Covert payments to providers, local actors, or officials to obtain access or suppress information (~$1M/yr mid-range).
Public Health Coordination Reserve $1.0M/yr
[#31] Reserve for coordination with public health agencies, mass recall logistics and large-scale medical responses.
Cloud Compute And Scraping Infrastructure $600K/yr
[#2] 24/7 scraping, proxy pools, cloud GPU/CPU inference and storage; bandwidth and anti-bot costs (mid-range).
Supplies And Consumables $500K/yr
[#14, #27] PPE, decontamination consumables, disposal contracts, filters and routine environmental monitoring consumables.
Recall And Buyback Reserve $500K/yr
[#17] Budget for locating purchasers, buybacks, refunds, and inventory destruction for periodic recall campaigns.
Training And Simulation $500K/yr
[#24] Regular drills, simulations, cross-department exercises and simulator hardware maintenance.
Database Infiltration Ops $300K/yr
[#9] Field ops for direct DB access when remote methods fail (6–15 ops/yr mid-range).
Psychological Services $300K/yr
[#26] Counseling, PTSD treatment and long-term therapy programs for exposed staff.
Automated Deletion Incident Ops $200K/yr
[#8] On-call developer teams and per-incident staffing for hidden script pushes (budget for ~300 incidents with automation).
Communications Denial And Content Control Maintenance $200K/yr
[#34] Ongoing operation of content-removal networks, mirror takedown processes and staffing to seed alternate explanations.
Cyber Ops Tooling Maintenance $150K/yr
[#3] Ongoing maintenance for exploit toolkits, injection tool upkeep, red-team operations and pentest retainer.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $31.4M/yr
70.0% probability / year
Normal year with ongoing detection, automated deletions, routine maintenance, and no major breaches or high-cost incidents.
routine_operations automated_detection_success no_field-level escalations
🚨 Minor Incident $33.4M/yr
25.0% probability / year +$2.0M vs baseline
Localized failure to remove an instance that requires several field infiltrations, limited demolition, targeted recalls and legal/PR activity.
missed_obscure_site failed_automated_deletion small-scale_public_exposure
🚨 Major Breach $56.4M/yr
4.0% probability / year +$25.0M vs baseline
Significant propagation from a missed instance on a high-traffic platform leading to large-scale recalls, mass amnestic campaigns, demolition of hosting infrastructure and substantial PR/legal payouts.
high-profile_platform_failure mass_product_propagation public_health_level_event
🚨 Catastrophic Breach $131.4M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$100.0M vs baseline
Catastrophic containment failure (site-level sonic/destructive event or widespread lethal propagation) requiring site relocation, mass reparations, and extraordinary demolition/rebuild costs.
uncontained_sonic_or_projectile_event simultaneous_multi-site_failures public_exposure_with_fatalities
👥 Personnel 68 total
Role Count Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent 40 MTF-799 operational manpower (note #5) — field teams performing raids, infiltration, and physical interventions.
SOC Analyst / ML Ops / Analyst 18 24/7 SOC / monitoring personnel (note #4) triaging model hits, ML operations, and escalation decisions.
Developer / ML Engineer 8 Operational ML/dev staff for pipeline maintenance, on-call incident script pushes and tooling (recurring support included in staff_wages).
Site Director / Executive Staff 2 Site-level management and executive oversight included in staffing budget.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide detailed line items and ranges, but many costs (black-budget, legal exposure, contingency reserves, and per-incident high-risk ops) are highly uncertain and scenario-dependent; estimates use mid-range assumptions.
← SCP-5287 ↑ All SCPs SCP-5289 →