SCP-5460 — SCP-5460 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-5460 Neutralized ~ medium confidence

SCP-5460

Expected annual

$3.5M

One-time setup

$10.0M

Annual recurring

$3.1M

Personnel

Total one-time program and contingency costs are approximately $10,029,500, driven primarily by facility build-outs, imaging acquisition/options, prototype rebuild and historical recovery; baseline recurring costs are approximately $3,090,750/year driven by staffing, maintenance, imaging upkeep, legal/ethics reviews and a program contingency.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $10.0M

Neuroimaging Purchase $2.5M

[#11] Option B: purchase and install fMRI/MEG equipment (capital purchase alternative to contracting).

Program Overrun Contingency $2.3M

[#26] 30% contingency applied to aggregated one-time program spend to cover overruns and uncertainties.

Facilities $950K

[#1, #17] Vault and secure document storage upgrades plus containment/test-chamber build-out (RF shielding, environmental controls, interlocks).

Historical Operation Costs $875K

[#22] Retrospective accounting for MTF/UIU raid and associated deployment costs already incurred.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $800K

[#9] Forensic analysis & reverse-engineering team engagement (salaries/overhead for 6–12 month specialist team).

Prototype Rebuild $675K

[#14] Rebuild of console and up to 10 headsets (PCBs, enclosures, assembly; excludes R&D labor).

Equipment $500K

[#10, #16] Specialist signal-analysis equipment and secure computing hardware (HSMs, air-gapped workstations, SAN/NAS).

Maxwellist Acquisition Operations $300K

[#21] Covert acquisition/negotiation operations with Maxwellist community (payments/ops/travel).

Archival Contingency Fund $300K

[#25] One-time contingency fund for future archival actions, classification renewal or forced actions.

Medical Contingency Reserve $250K

[#13] Reserve fund for participant adverse events, hospitalization and long-term care (one-time reserve).

Legal Cover One Time $150K

[#8] Initial legal/cover-story establishment, NDAs, initial defense/PR setup.

Neuroimaging Contract Study $150K

[#11] Option A: contracted limited fMRI/MEG/EEG study (one-time study contracts instead of purchase).

Backup Power And Ems $140K

[#20] UPS, generator, EMI suppression, installation for console/kill-switch resilience.

Disposal Event Cost $50K

[#23] Hazardous materials handling and disposal / prototype destruction (per-event cost).

Secure Transfer $40K

[#3] Armored transport, couriers, evidence-handling for recovered materials transfer to Site-64.

Digitalization And Archiving $35K

[#4] High-assurance scanning, air-gapped backups, tamper-evident media creation (one-time ingest and archival creation).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $3.1M/yr

Active Program Personnel $1.2M/yr

[#19] 24/7 monitoring and operations personnel (operators, on-call scientists, safety officers, med techs) if device becomes active.

Program Overrun Contingency $713K/yr

[#26] 30% contingency applied to aggregated recurring costs to cover overruns and unforeseen annual expenses.

Neuroimaging Maintenance $350K/yr

[#11] Ongoing maintenance/contract rates for imaging hardware if purchased (service contracts) or recurring contracted study time if repeated.

Staff Wages $260K/yr

[#5, #6] Baseline containment administrative personnel (records custodian + part-time admin) and security staffing for sensitive material (escorts/guards).

Human Subject Programs $200K/yr

[#12] Recruitment, screening, compensation, medical monitoring for ongoing/continued study phases.

Red Team Assessments $80K/yr

[#18] Independent red-team and compliance testing cycles (budgeted per annual assessment cadence).

Insurance And Contract Overhead $60K/yr

[#24] Liability coverage, higher contractor rates due to secrecy/clearance and indemnity costs.

Ethics Committee Reviews $50K/yr

[#7] Ethics Committee and external consultant fees per review cycle (budgeted annually for potential reviews).

Supplies And Consumables $40K/yr

[#15] Electrodes, wiring, bench consumables and replacement parts for iterative prototyping.

Cover Story And Legal $40K/yr

[#8] Ongoing legal counsel, PR retainers, FOIA mitigation and legal response retainers.

Secure Computing Maintenance $30K/yr

[#16] Maintenance, backup rotation, HSM support and classified infrastructure upkeep.

Backup Power Maintenance $20K/yr

[#20] Fuel, generator maintenance, EMI filter upkeep.

Facilities Maintenance $15K/yr

[#2] Vault environmental controls power, alarm monitoring contract, periodic integrity checks and consumables.

Long Term Archival $15K/yr

[#25] Periodic archival retention fees and scheduled re-review / classification upkeep.

Disposal Fund Annual $10K/yr

[#23] Budget for occasional disposal/neutralization events on an as-needed basis.

Archival Storage And Maintenance $8K/yr

[#4] Ongoing off-site secure storage fees, tape/media refresh, and classified archive maintenance.

Research And Monitoring $0/yr

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Logistics And Transport $0/yr

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⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $3.1M/yr

88.0% probability / year

Neutralized, uneventful year with secure archival storage and baseline oversight/maintenance only.

documents archived minimal access requests no active rebuild or testing

🚨 Active Research Program $6.4M/yr

10.0% probability / year +$3.3M vs baseline

Decision to actively investigate/rebuild/test SCP-5460 leading to heavy one-time project spending plus increased operations.

Ethics approval to rebuild Forensic/reverse-engineering engagement Prototype rebuild and containment construction

🚨 Major Incident $4.9M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$1.8M vs baseline

Medical/containment incident during testing causing high emergency care, legal, PR and remediation costs.

Adverse participant events Containment/testing breach Significant legal/PR exposure

👥 Personnel 17 total

Role	Count	Notes
Records Custodian / Records Manager	1	[#5] Dedicated records custodian to manage access and custody of recovered documentation.
Administrative Staff	1	[#5] Part-time administrative overhead supporting logs and access requests.
Security Officer / MTF Agent	3	[#6] Armed guards / clearance-level supervisors for escorting researchers and guarding storage.
Active Program Operators (operators / on-call scientists / safety officers / med techs)	8	[#19] 24/7 monitoring and operations staff required if device becomes active (6–10 FTEs; counted here as 8).
Forensic / Reverse-engineering Team (temporary)	4	[#9] Initial specialist team (3–6 FTEs) engaged for 6–12 month analysis; listed as 4 FTEs as a representative midpoint for planning.

📋 Confidence Notes

Many line items are given as wide ranges and several major decisions (contracting vs purchase of imaging hardware; whether an active program is initiated) drive large variance; core archival and vault costs are well-defined but program-level R&D and contingency estimates are uncertain.

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