SCP-5790 — SCP-5790 | Cost Breakdown

Read on SCP Wiki ↗

SCP-5790 Unknown ? low confidence

SCP-5790

Expected annual

$16.2M

One-time setup

$108.9M

Annual recurring

$11.5M

Personnel

One-time buildout and large contingency reserves drive the majority of upfront cost (hardened facilities, redundancy, instrumentation, and catastrophe reserves). Annual operating costs are dominated by staff wages, ongoing legal/cover operations, research and monitoring, and site maintenance.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $108.9M

Containment Breach Reserve $50.0M

[#28] Large-scale catastrophe reserve for remediation, payouts, or national-scale mitigation.

Long Duration Preservation Projection $30.0M

[#47] Present-value projection for multidecade maintenance (budget projection, discounted).

Facilities $10.1M

[#1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #31] Land acquisition, hardened chamber construction, secondary shell, environmental controls, power infrastructure installation, and perimeter infrastructure.

Emergency Cleanup Per Incident Reserve $5.0M

[#27] Per-incident cleanup and remediation reserve for a major leak or contamination event.

Contingency Deployment Reserve $5.0M

[#44] Pre-funded rapid-deployment reserve (airlift, mobilization) per planned escalation.

Equipment $2.4M

[#4, #8, #10] Specialized shielding/materials, monitoring sensors/cameras/seismic/radiation instrumentation, and transport/heavy-lift vehicles.

Community Buyouts $2.0M

[#24] Initial mitigation/buyouts or relocation costs for nearby properties to create buffer zones.

Instrumentation R And D $1.0M

[#20] Prototype sensors, custom tooling and R&D to interact with novel properties.

Economic Disruption Reserve $1.0M

[#46] Opportunity-cost / economic disruption contingency reserve for restricted land use or transport impacts.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $500K

[#18] Secure laboratory outfitting (gloveboxes, biosafety cabinets, spectroscopy, vacuum/cryogenic systems).

Communications And Information Suppression Initial $500K

[#22] Initial legal/PR infrastructure, shell entities and contractors for information suppression.

Personnel Recruitment And Clearance $300K

[#11] Recruitment, background investigations, polygraphs, psychological screening (estimated for initial staff cohort).

Cybersecurity And Classified Network $250K

[#9] Air-gapped servers, encrypted comms, HSMs and classified-network build-out.

Backup Generators $200K

[#7] Backup generators, ATS, initial fuel storage and testing rigs.

Training Initial $200K

[#36] Initial training curricula, simulation rigs and tabletop exercises.

Spares Stockpile $200K

[#39] Stockpile of spare doors, seals, valves and custom parts with long lead times.

Ppe And Decon Initial $150K

[#16] Initial hazmat suits, decon showers, autoclaves, chemical neutralizers and installation.

Secure Data Archival Initial $150K

[#33] Hardened off-site archival, cold storage setup and initial geo-separated backups.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $11.5M/yr

Staff Wages $5.5M/yr

[#12, #13, #14, #15] Salaries and benefits for core containment staff, specialized researchers, rapid-reaction/security teams, and on-site medical/psychological staff.

Cover Story And Legal $1.5M/yr

[#23] Ongoing legal retainers, PR, settlements, NDAs and witness management.

Research And Monitoring $800K/yr

[#19, #8, #21] Laboratory consumables/testing, routine monitoring, and recurring calibration/repairs of instrumentation.

Facilities Maintenance $600K/yr

[#29, #32] Ongoing utilities, HVAC power draw, site operations, perimeter maintenance and road/fence repairs.

Political Liaison $500K/yr

[#42] High-level agency liaison, hush funds and political/agency support retainers.

Logistics And Transport $300K/yr

[#10, #30] Transport vehicle operation/maintenance and recurring fuel costs for generators/vehicles.

Staff Turnover $300K/yr

[#38] Recruitment costs, severance, pensions and turnover-related expenses.

Research Collaboration $300K/yr

[#41] Paid partnerships with universities, contractors, or private labs for specialist expertise.

Surveillance Recurring $250K/yr

[#35] Ongoing satellite/aerial tasking, contracted aerial surveillance and notam enforcement where applicable.

Supplies And Consumables $200K/yr

[#17, #15] Replacement PPE, consumable filters, cleaning chemicals, medical supplies and single-use disposables.

Instrumentation Maintenance $200K/yr

[#21] Calibration, spare parts and upgrades for custom gear and sensors.

Waste Handling $200K/yr

[#26] Licensed hazardous waste transport, incineration and disposal contracts.

Community Payments $200K/yr

[#25] Long-term hush payments, compensation or resettlement program costs for locals.

Fuel For Generators $150K/yr

[#30] Diesel/LPG recurring fuel purchases and periodic replacement.

Training Recurring $150K/yr

[#37] Periodic drills, refresher training and contractor certification costs.

Design Revision $150K/yr

[#43] Ongoing engineering studies and containment redesign as new behavior is observed.

Permitting And Liaison $100K/yr

[#40] Regulatory permitting, environmental reporting and interagency liaison retainer costs.

Ethics Oversight $75K/yr

[#45] Internal review boards, compliance audits and oversight staffing.

Offsite Backup Maintenance $50K/yr

[#34] Rotation, storage costs and integrity checks for off-site data backups.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $11.5M/yr

89.0% probability / year

Normal year with no major incidents; steady-state operations and routine research/maintenance.

routine operations no breaches scheduled maintenance

🚨 Minor Incident $18.5M/yr

9.0% probability / year +$7.0M vs baseline

Localized containment incident requiring emergency cleanup, temporary deployment and legal/PR response.

localized leak/containment failure limited civilian exposure targeted cleanup and settlements

🚨 Catastrophic Breach $211.5M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$200.0M vs baseline

Large-scale breach or realization of civilization-impacting properties, requiring mass remediation, relocation, and national-level response.

major containment collapse widespread exposure national mitigation and relocation

👥 Personnel 60 total

Role	Count	Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent	30	[#12, #14] 24/7 containment guards and primary tactical response staffing reflected in core containment wages and rapid-reaction capability.
Research Scientist	10	[#13] Specialized anomalous researchers, physicists/biologists/engineers reflected in research staffing costs.
Security Response / Rapid-Reaction Team	6	[#14] Tactical unit for breaches; training and on-call costs included in staff wages and training budgets.
Medical Officer	3	[#15] On-site med staff and psychological support; wages and medical supplies budgeted.
Engineer / Maintenance	4	[#5, #6, #21] Facilities and equipment maintenance, HVAC and power systems upkeep.
Administrative Staff	3	[#11, #23] Administrative, HR, legal-liaison support; initial recruitment and ongoing cover/PR coordination.
Information Security / IT	2	[#9, #33, #34] Cybersecurity, classified network ops and off-site archival maintenance.
Facilities Operator / Technician	2	[#29, #30] Operators for generators, fuel logistics and day-to-day site operations.

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates are order-of-magnitude and the article is heavily redacted with an 'Unknown' class; wide cost ranges and scenario outcomes produce low confidence.

← SCP-5789 ↑ All SCPs SCP-5791 →