SCP-7958 — SCP-7958 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-7958 Neutralised ~ medium confidence

SCP-7958

Expected annual

$2.0M

One-time setup

$6.7M

Annual recurring

$1.7M

Personnel

One-time establishment costs are dominated by a secure media observation centre and a multi‑million contingency reserve; recurring annual costs (~$2.0M/yr) are driven by staffing, security, legal/PR, and monitoring/archival operations.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $6.7M

Contingency Catastrophic Reserve $5.0M

[#20] Large one-time reserve set aside for catastrophic, wide-dissemination events requiring buyouts, fines and major emergency response.

Civilian Compensation Contingency $500K

[#13] Contingency fund for civilian compensation, relocation, medical costs for larger incidents or a small mass-exposure scenario.

Facilities $300K

[#1] Secure media observation centre build-out: shielded room, HVAC, Faraday cage, secure access, racks and physical construction.

Broadcast Blocking Initial Deployment $200K

[#3] Initial deployment costs to arrange broadcast removal/technical blocks or buyouts at operator level (one-time negotiation/deployment).

Broadcast Slot Buyout Initial $200K

[#14] One-time cost to buy/replace a broadcast slot or produce replacement programming for national platforms.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $100K

[#11] Initial laboratory buildout/CAPEX for material analysis instruments and setup (GC/MS/TEM access, BSL prep where needed).

Legal Incident Settlement Fund $100K

[#12] One-time incident settlement / payment fund for discrete take-downs or NDAs (per-incident reserve).

Equipment $60K

[#2] Signal interception & receiver hardware: antennas, SDRs, satellite tuners, cabling, spare parts, rack mounting.

Incident Response Equipment $60K

[#16] Hazmat suits, containment vehicles and emergency retrieval kits (initial purchase).

Decommissioning Final Archiving $50K

[#22] Costs to decommission the program and move materials to long-term cold storage / legal accession files.

Cybersecurity Initial $40K

[#7] One-time cybersecurity hardening, SIEM deployment, DRM/forensics tool purchase and integration.

Archival Storage Initial $25K

[#6] Initial SAN/tape/cold storage purchase for continuous recording archival capacity.

Retrieval Per Operation $25K

[#9] Representative per-operation retrieval / covert recovery equipment & immediate transport cost (one OP example; operations budget is recurring).

Item Containment Initial $20K

[#10] Initial secure containment outfitting per anomalous item (vault space, racks, climate controls — per-item engineering estimate).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.7M/yr

Staff Wages $500K/yr

[#4] Continuous monitoring staff (24/7 watch rotations): comms engineers, media analysts, on-call researcher, sysadmin; blended salaries + benefits for ~8 FTE.

Cover Story And Legal $250K/yr

[#12] Legal counsel retainer, PR/cover-story operations, negotiations with broadcasters/ISPs and ongoing legal support.

Retrieval Operations Budget $200K/yr

[#9] Annual budget for multiple retrieval/field operations, travel, vehicles and evidence transport.

Research And Monitoring $150K/yr

[#8] Forensic media analysis & research funding: staff time, lab resources and investigative effort for anomalies.

Logistics And Transport $120K/yr

[#17] Transportation & logistics: discrete couriers, armored transport, routine secure chain-of-custody trips.

Broadcast Slot Replacement Costs $100K/yr

[#14] Ongoing costs to provide replacement programming or continued slot purchase if required.

Broadcast Blocking Maintenance $72K/yr

[#3] Ongoing maintenance/coordination costs to keep the channel blocked from public distribution (monthly contracts or operator coordination).

Laboratory Testing $60K/yr

[#11] Consumables, instrument time, outsourced testing and per-item analysis costs.

Administrative Overhead $60K/yr

[#21] Procurement, accounting, travel, liaison with broadcasters and routine administrative costs.

Civilian Management Budget $50K/yr

[#13] Annual budget for civilian witness support, small settlements and temporary assistance.

Training $40K/yr

[#18] Ongoing training, exercises and certification for surveillance, evidence handling and safety.

Energy Hvac $36K/yr

[#15] Continuous power and climate control for secure rooms, servers and vaults.

Archival Storage Replication $30K/yr

[#6] Offsite replication, tape rotation, storage refresh and format migration for archived feeds.

Long Term Curation $25K/yr

[#19] Periodic verification of neutralisation, archive migrations and small research access team retention.

Item Containment Maintenance $24K/yr

[#10] Ongoing maintenance and monitoring costs for contained anomalous items (assumes small inventory; per-item maintenance aggregated).

Incident Response Maintenance $15K/yr

[#16] Maintenance, replenishment and certification for incident response equipment.

Cybersecurity Licenses $6K/yr

[#7] Annual licenses/support for SIEM, forensics suites and DRM tools.

Facilities Maintenance $0/yr

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Supplies And Consumables $0/yr

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⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.7M/yr

67.5% probability / year

Normal year with no major incidents: ongoing monitoring, archival, staffing, legal retainer and routine operations.

no anomalous dissemination routine monitoring only

🚨 Minor Incident $2.2M/yr

30.0% probability / year +$490K vs baseline

One or a few small anomalous sales occur that require targeted retrievals, additional lab analysis and modest legal/PR actions.

isolated anomalous purchase targeted field retrievals small legal settlements

🚨 Major Breach $3.5M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$1.7M vs baseline

Wider dissemination or a persistent broadcast requiring national-level buyout/cooperation, significant PR/legal expense and larger retrieval campaigns.

national broadcaster exposure failure of local blocking multiple hazardous items sold

🚨 Catastrophic Broadcast $9.0M/yr

0.5% probability / year +$7.2M vs baseline

Rare catastrophic dissemination event causing mass hazard or international spread, triggering full contingency reserve and large emergency response.

international propagation mass public harm major legal/financial penalties

👥 Personnel 8 total

Role	Count	Notes
Comms Engineer	2	[#4] Directional antenna/SDR and feed management; part of 24/7 monitoring team covered by staff_wages.
Media Analyst	2	[#4] Continuous content review, tagging and initial triage of anomalous material; included in staff_wages.
System Administrator / Sysadmin	1	[#4] Maintain servers, SANs, SIEM and monitoring infrastructure; included in staff_wages.
Research Scientist / On-call Researcher	1	[#4, #8] Forensic media analysis and specialist consultation; included in staff_wages and research_and_monitoring.
Data Technician	1	[#6] Archival management, ingestion and replication operations; included in staff_wages.
Shift Coordinator / Operations Lead	1	[#4] Oversees shifts, liaison with legal and security; included in staff_wages.

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates are order-of-magnitude based on analyst ranges in the notes; many line items (broadcast buyouts, contingency reserve and per-incident settlement amounts) have wide ranges, producing moderate confidence in totals but reasonable confidence in recurring staffing/security estimates.

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