SCP-603 — SCP-603 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-603 Safe ~ medium confidence

SCP-603

Expected annual

$1.4M

One-time setup

$1.2M

Annual recurring

$1.4M

Personnel

Estimated first-year (one-time + recurring) setup costs are approximately $2.6M with one-time capital spending of $1,193,500 and ongoing recurring costs of $1,406,000/yr. Main cost drivers are specialized staff wages (operators, researchers, medical), custom supervisory software and virtualization/archival infrastructure, and contingency/reserve funding.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.2M

Contingency Reserve $500K

[#28] Escalation / contingency reserve for catastrophic scenarios, emergency relocation, litigation or major equipment replacement.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $320K

[#3, #4, #11, #12, #19, #25] Virtualization/sandbox licenses & setup, custom real-time supervisory/kill software development, archival SAN and tape initial purchase, forensic/WORM infrastructure, initial compiler/build-farm hardware, and initial data-analysis/ML tooling.

Facilities $150K

[#1] Secure laboratory build-out for Lab 12-A / Observation Room 1: one-way glass, access control, EM/RF shielding, passthroughs, wipeable surfaces, signage, and installation labor.

Access Control Initial $50K

[#9] Initial IAM tooling / custom dev and integration for 24-hour temporary passwords, MFA, privileged account workflows and logging.

Personnel Security Initial $40K

[#14] Initial background checks and clearances for staff (~$1–3k/person assumed for ~20 staff).

Equipment $35K

[#2, #13, #23] Dedicated containment server, video/remote observation hardware, and misc. hardware (workstation-class server; high-resolution tamper-proof cameras; mechanical shutters if used).

Network Segmentation Initial $30K

[#10] One-time costs for VLANs, data-diode hardware and physical segmentation design and installation.

Legal Cover Initial $30K

[#15] Setup costs for shell companies, cover documentation, initial legal retainers and PR setup.

Power Infrastructure $12K

[#20] UPS purchase and installation to allow controlled shutdowns for the lab and server equipment.

Special Viewing Hardware $10K

[#23] Automatic screen blinders / mechanical shutters or electrochromic solutions for rapid visual blocking during dangerous scenes.

Medical Equipment $10K

[#7] AED(s), trauma cabinet, oxygen/IV starter kits and initial medical supplies for on-site response, quarantine-room outfitting assumed in facilities.

Secure Destruction Initial $6K

[#22] Disk shredder / physical media destruction hardware and initial secure-wiping tools.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.4M/yr

Staff Wages $715K/yr

[#5, #6, #7] Operator/technician staffing (3 operators, fully burdened ~$240k total), research staff (3 FTEs, mid-range $375k total), and one full-time medic ($100k).

Red Team $125K/yr

[#18] Red-team safety research and controlled probe experiments to discover triggers and safe thresholds.

Medical Research $100K/yr

[#24] Ongoing forensic pathology, medical research, autopsy and longitudinal studies related to SCP-603 effects.

Cover Story And Legal $75K/yr

[#15] Annual legal/PR/cover-story budget for redactings, inquiries, and legal counsel.

Network Monitoring $50K/yr

[#10] Ongoing intrusion-detection, monitoring, and network operations for segmented lab networks and data-diode oversight.

Insurance Reserve $50K/yr

[#17] Internal risk accounting / insurance-like reserve for settlements, staff replacement and asset losses.

Psychological Support $40K/yr

[#8] Employee assistance program and on-call psychologist retainer for debriefs and post-exposure counseling.

Incident Response And Drills $30K/yr

[#16] Annual drills, tabletop exercises, external consultant engagements and training materials.

Data Analysis Ops $30K/yr

[#25] Ongoing compute, tooling and ML/analysis budgets for transcript/code evolution analysis and detection tooling.

Ongoing Maintenance And Patch Management $30K/yr

[#29] Firmware/software update validation, cautious patch rollouts and maintenance engineering time.

Supplies And Consumables $25K/yr

[#7, #21, #22] PPE, medical disposables, evidence bags, wipes, replacement media, and other routine consumables (including medical consumables).

Documentation And Sops $25K/yr

[#26] Documentation, SOP maintenance, secure publishing and redaction team costs.

Facilities Maintenance $15K/yr

[#1] Routine building and observation-room maintenance, cleaning, and facility upkeep for Lab 12-A.

Logistics And Transport $15K/yr

[#27] Secure courier services, tamper-evident containers, and chain-of-custody transport costs for media/hardware.

Personnel Security Renewal $15K/yr

[#14] Annual renewal/vetting and continuous background monitoring for cleared staff.

Build Ops $15K/yr

[#19] Ongoing CI/CD, build-farm operations, power and maintenance for large-memory build nodes and GPU-accelerated test environments.

Access Control Maintenance $10K/yr

[#9] Ongoing maintenance, license renewals and admin for IAM and temporary-password systems.

Forensics Operations $10K/yr

[#12] Ongoing logging, immutable storage operations, chain-of-custody support and forensic analysis expenses.

Power And Hvac $10K/yr

[#20] Electricity costs and HVAC for GPU/server heat loads and climate control.

Personnel Training $10K/yr

[#30] Training, simulations and UI-safety training for staff interacting with anomalous UI / input sanitization.

Archival Maintenance $8K/yr

[#11, #13] SAN maintenance, replication costs and tape rotation/storage operations for build archives and video recordings.

Secure Destruction Ops $3K/yr

[#22] Annual operating costs for media destruction, secure-wiping cycles and disposal services.

Research And Monitoring $0/yr

[]

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.4M/yr

92.0% probability / year

Normal year with scheduled experiments, no major incidents; routine recurring operations only.

scheduled experiments no incident

🚨 Minor Incident $1.5M/yr

5.0% probability / year +$75K vs baseline

Small medical incident or single-person exposure requiring emergency response, additional pathology, and PR/legal work.

single 'die' or SCP-603-95 exposure on-site medical intervention

🚨 Major Breach $1.9M/yr

1.0% probability / year +$500K vs baseline

Significant containment failure or wider exposure leading to multi-person medical incidents, legal action, equipment loss and emergency measures.

unauthorized remote execution multiple 'die' inputs or prolonged SCP-603-95 viewing data exfiltration or major equipment damage

🚨 Research Breakthrough Requiring Scale Up $1.7M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$300K vs baseline

Discovery necessitates rapid scaling of archival and compute resources and hiring/contracting additional research staff.

new persistent/persistent-scene requiring expanded archives need for expanded compute/GPU capacity

👥 Personnel 7 total

Role	Count	Notes
Operator / Technician	3	[#5] 24/7 coverage via 3x 8-hour shifts; handles running, logging and immediate termination.
Research Scientist	3	[#6] Software engineers/reverse-engineers/computational linguists to analyze outputs and maintain tooling (2–4 recommended; 3 used here).
Medical Officer / Paramedic	1	[#7] One full-time medic on-site during experiments (alternative: on-call coverage is noted in analyst notes).

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates use midpoints of analyst ranges where provided and combine multiple one-time and recurring line items; costs are moderately well-specified in the notes but uncertain due to broad ranges, possible organizational variability, and low-frequency high-impact incidents.

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