SCP-5979 — SCP-5979 | Cost Breakdown

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $4.6B

Space Assets Deployment $2.0B

[#2] Launch and procurement of a small space-based observatory/relay constellation (telescope(s), relay satellites, station-keeping hardware).

Contingency Reserve Fund $1.0B

[#17] One-time central liquid contingency reserve for emergency procurements, covert buys, exclusive data purchases.

Facilities $400.0M

[#1] Construction/site-prep for dedicated deep-space radio observatory upgrades (dishes, foundations, EM shielding, pointing infrastructure).

Bunkers Capex $400.0M

[#15] Construction/acquisition of hardened contingency shelters and secure archives for key personnel and records.

Equipment $300.0M

[#1] High-gain antennas, phased array hardware, cryogenic receivers, VLBI backends and related hardware.

Asset Procurement $200.0M

[#24] One-time purchase/lease/acquisition of critical geography/equipment (observatory sites, land, telescope purchases).

Mitigation Seed Capital $100.0M

[#14] Initial capital to seed long-shot mitigation research and feasibility studies (early program-level investment).

Initial Ops Centers $50.0M

[#3] Hardened, secure 24/7 operations/mission control setup, EMP protection, backup power and redundant sites (capital costs).

Logistics Staging $50.0M

[#16] One-time staging and prepositioning costs (aircraft, vehicles, caches) for emergency logistics capacity.

Hush Settlement Pool $50.0M

[#25] One-time contingency pool for targeted settlements, payments or purchases of exclusive rights to data.

Probe Mission Capex $25.0M

[#13] One-time concept-to-prototype costs for fast-response reconnaissance probes / robotic mission demonstrators.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $20.0M

[#8] Signal analysis / linguistics lab buildout, initial tooling and instrumentation for translation and analysis teams.

Hpc Cluster Purchase $20.0M

[#7] Purchase of HPC cluster for petabyte-scale data processing and analysis.

Cybersecurity Hardening $10.0M

[#6] One-time hardened secure comms and intrusion-resistant infrastructure and initial secure-network deployments.

Archive Establishment $5.0M

[#22] Physical and digital archive establishment, vaults and distributed archival copies.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.3B/yr

Global Suppression $500.0M/yr

[#9] Active worldwide suppression/censorship operations, influencer payments, takedown contracts and large-scale covert influence.

Geopolitical Risk Premium $112.5M/yr

[#26] 15% geopolitical/diplomatic risk premium added atop suppression/operations budgets to cover sanctions, friction and opportunity costs.

Space Assets Operations $100.0M/yr

[#2] Ongoing ops, station-keeping, telemetry and relay maintenance for space-based observatories and satellite constellation.

Mitigation Research $100.0M/yr

[#14] Ongoing long-shot mitigation research (physics, propulsion, mass-driver studies) at program scale (seed-level sustained).

Security Operations $80.0M/yr

[#5] Armed security, perimeter protection, counterintelligence and force-projection capacity for multiple sites.

Staff Wages $50.0M/yr

[#4] Ongoing salaries and benefits for scientists, engineers, linguists, analysts, ops staff (fully-loaded).

Cover Story And Legal $50.0M/yr

[#10, #12] Legal retainers, diplomatic engagement budgets, cover-story maintenance, and classification/lobbying activity.

Public Relations $50.0M/yr

[#12] Long-term PR/disinformation campaigns, front organizations, and narrative management across regions and languages.

Logistics And Transport $30.0M/yr

[#16] Ongoing emergency logistics capacity maintenance (aircraft/transport standby, fuel caches, movement readiness).

Co Option Infiltration $30.0M/yr

[#11] Long-term grants, covert placements, and influence operations inside civilian observatories and journals.

Bunker Sustainment $30.0M/yr

[#15] Sustaining costs for contingency shelters (life support, medical supplies, rotation of personnel, utilities).

Facilities Maintenance $25.0M/yr

[#3, #20] Physical site maintenance, HVAC, dish/mechanism upkeep, and ops-site maintenance costs.

Cybersecurity $20.0M/yr

[#6] Ongoing secure-comm operations, IDS/active countermeasures, covert network maintenance and encryption management.

Probe Mission R&D $20.0M/yr

[#13] Ongoing mission concept, rapid-prototype and launch-study budgets for reconnaissance probes.

Diplomatic Support $20.0M/yr

[#18] Liaison teams embedded with militaries/space agencies and on-call diplomatic/covert support costs.

Hush Payments $20.0M/yr

[#25] Recurring targeted payments, exclusive data purchases and occasional hush settlements as events occur.

Ops Center Operations $15.0M/yr

[#3] Ongoing operations center staffing, secure communications upkeep and redundant site operations.

Research And Monitoring $10.0M/yr

[#8, #7] Ongoing linguistic/translation and signal-analysis R&D, tool development, and dedicated analysis programs.

Vetting And Counterintelligence $10.0M/yr

[#21] Ongoing personnel vetting, polygraphs, monitoring and leak-investigation functions.

Supplies And Consumables $5.0M/yr

[#20, #16] Consumables (cryogens, spares, fuel caches, office/lab supplies) used in routine operations and emergency staging.

Data Storage Processing $5.0M/yr

[#7] Petabyte-scale storage, bandwidth, backups and archival retention costs.

Public Deception $5.0M/yr

[#19] Ongoing staged hoaxes, fake experiments and contrarian channels to discredit legitimate observations.

Archive Maintenance $2.0M/yr

[#22] Maintenance and replication costs for secure archives and off-site backups.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.3B/yr

87.0% probability / year

Normal year with routine monitoring, suppression, and operations; no major exposures or asset losses.

no_public_exposure regular_operations no_major_asset_loss

🚨 Minor Incident $1.3B/yr

10.0% probability / year +$50.0M vs baseline

Localized data leak or limited public dissemination requiring emergency legal action, targeted suppression, and payouts.

localized_leak small-scale_media_exposure

🚨 Major Breach $6.3B/yr

2.0% probability / year +$5.0B vs baseline

Wide public exposure or international political incident requiring large-scale emergency measures, international negotiations, and surge procurement.

global_public_exposure major_journalistic_revelation international_legal_challenge

🚨 Space Asset Loss $1.8B/yr

1.0% probability / year +$500.0M vs baseline

Failure or loss of a critical space-based observatory/relay node requiring rapid replacement and degraded monitoring.

satellite_failure constellation_loss

👥 Personnel 333 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist	80	[#4] Astronomers, astrophysicists and subject-matter researchers responsible for observation and interpretation.
Signal Analyst / Data Scientist	60	[#4, #8] Signal processing, translation tooling, NLP and long-duration analysis tasks.
Security Officer / MTF Agent	80	[#5] Armed site security, rapid response and perimeter protection at multiple facilities.
Engineer / Maintenance	40	[#1, #20] Radio engineers, antenna technicians, satellite ground-station and HPC maintainers.
Linguists / Translators	10	[#8] Specialized translators and cryptolinguists (German specialists and language teams).
Project Managers	8	[#3] Program management for operations, missions and suppression programs.
Administrative Staff	20	[#10] Administrative, legal-support and contracting staff for ongoing operations.
Medical Officer	5	[#15] Medical staff to support key personnel and bunker sustainment.
Site Director / Executive Staff	2	[#3] Executive oversight and senior liaison roles.
Contractors / External Consultants	28	[#11, #13] On-call contractors for mission bursts, diplomatic embedding, legal contingencies and specialized technical tasks.

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates are based on broad analyst ranges and high uncertainty around technical scope, number/capability of space assets, and political/suppression program scale; values should be treated as order-of-magnitude.