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SCP-8177 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-8177
Expected annual
$7.5M
One-time setup
$21.6M
Annual recurring
$7.3M
Personnel
30
Estimated one-time setup is roughly $21.6M driven by production tooling, Athena hardware, and site construction; annual recurring costs are about $7.2M driven by staff wages, Athena operations, research, and per-session consumables.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $21.6M
Equipment $8.0M
[#1, #4, #5, #6, #9, #8] Capital tooling and PCB production for SCP-8177-2 units, Athena.V13 GPU/air-gapped hardware, initial encrypted storage SAN/LTO setup, network hardening hardware, and one-time emergency medical equipment.
Facilities $6.0M
[#3, #16, #25] Construction and finishing of shielded containment/operation chambers, partial UPS/generator installs and site-level infrastructure contingency for remote finishes.
Retrieval Reserve Fund $3.0M
[#20] Reserve fund for international retrieval/exfiltration contingency operations (per-operations fund maintained as one-time reserve).
Contingency Reserve $2.0M
[#21] Insurance-equivalent contingency/legal-defense reserve fund (one-time capital reserved).
Site Scale Reserve $1.0M
[#25] One-time contingency to cover 2–5x per-site scale multipliers and remote-site premiums during initial rollout.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $750K
[#2] Prototype testing campaign, QA lab equipment, EMI/EMC test runs, cadaver/phantom heads and validation testing equipment.
Cover Story Setup $500K
[#13] Initial legal/PR/front-organization setup: shell companies, filings, fake trials and initial contingency PR funds.
Training And Sop Development $200K
[#18] One-time curriculum and initial certification/SOP production for operators, memetic safety training and emergency drills.
Secure Transport Setup $100K
[#8] Initial logistics & secure transport contract retainer, secure container purchase and setup for moving devices between sites.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $7.3M/yr
Staff Wages $3.2M/yr
[#7, #8, #14, #15, #23] Salaries and benefits for medical teams, core security staff, transcript review/memetic specialists, Athena engineering staff, and oversight/admin wages.
Facilities Maintenance $700K/yr
[#3, #6, #16, #25] Maintenance of shielded rooms, HVAC/cooling for equipment and GPUs, periodic TEMPEST/network audits and remote-site upkeep.
Athena Operations $700K/yr
[#4, #15] Ongoing Athena.V13 hardware maintenance, software model retraining, compute costs for fine-tuning and audits.
Research And Monitoring $600K/yr
[#12] Longitudinal cohort imaging/fMRI/MRI follow-ups, neuropsych testing and specialist analysis budgets.
Amortized Replacement Budget $600K/yr
[#17] Annual budget (5–15% of capital) for repairs, replacements, electrode wear and obsolescence of consoles.
Supplies And Consumables $225K/yr
[#10] Per-session consumables (electrodes, gels, sterile covers, PPE) scaled to session throughput (1,000-session baseline).
Logistics And Transport $200K/yr
[#8, #20] Recurring secure transport operations, mission budgets for moving units between sites (does not include large international retrieval reserve).
Oversight And Ethics $200K/yr
[#23] Recurring costs for internal oversight committees, audits, administration and review processes.
Cover Story And Legal $150K/yr
[#13] Ongoing legal/PR/front organization maintenance, shell company upkeep, liaison budgets and contingency funds for exposure mitigation.
Staff Psychological Care $150K/yr
[#19] Counseling, rotation programs, and amnestic remediation budgets for exposed staff.
Data Storage Recurring $150K/yr
[#5] Hot storage growth, tape rotation, archival expansion and secure destruction of derivatives.
Medical Contracts $150K/yr
[#9] Standing contracts with hospitals/surgical teams and on-call neurosurgical/ICU readiness contracts.
Training And Sop Ongoing $125K/yr
[#18] Ongoing operator recertification, turnover training, and periodic emergency drills.
Amnestic And Postprocessing $100K/yr
[#11] Amnestic drug stock, administration costs, psychiatric remediation and memetic countermeasure consumables.
Specialized Parts Procurement $75K/yr
[#24] Ongoing procurement and custom fabrication of obsolete/legacy high-voltage and biomedical components.
Secure Destruction And Sanitization $25K/yr
[#22] Annualized cost for controlled incineration, degaussing and memetic-safe sanitization events (per-event costs amortized).
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $7.3M/yr
94.0% probability / year
Normal operational year with no major incidents; recurring costs only.
routine_sessions scheduled_maintenance regular_research
🚨 Minor Incident $8.0M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$600K vs baseline
Localized adverse event (medical complication, equipment failure, small data leak) requiring additional medical treatment, replacement parts, limited legal action and extra transport.
medical_emergency single-site_equipment_failure limited_exposure_incident
🚨 Major Breach $15.2M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$7.8M vs baseline
Significant containment/security breach or high-profile exposure requiring large-scale retrieval, legal/PR response, replacement of multiple units and extended hospitalization/research.
public_exposure coordinated_breach international_retrieval
👥 Personnel 30 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist / Neurophysician 3 [#7] Senior neurophysicians to design/oversee procedures and interpret neural data.
Anesthetist / Medical Officer 3 [#7, #9] Anesthetists/ER physicians on-call for procedures and emergencies.
EEG Technician 6 [#7, #17] Technicians to attach electrodes, run sessions, and perform equipment maintenance.
Psychiatrist / Psychologist 2 [#7, #11, #19] For pre/post session evaluation, therapy and post-processing/amnestic oversight.
Security Officer / MTF Agent 6 [#8] Level-2/3 guards for operation oversight, storage security and transport escorts.
Data Scientist / ML Engineer 4 [#4, #15] Engineers maintaining Athena.V13, model retraining and validation.
Transcript Review / Memetic Specialist 3 [#14] Secure transcript redaction and memetic analysis teams.
Engineer / Maintenance 2 [#3, #16, #17] Facilities and equipment maintenance staff (shielding, HVAC, UPS, repairs).
Administrative Staff 1 [#13, #23] Admin, legal liaison and oversight support for cover stories and committees.
📋 Confidence Notes
Estimates are order-of-magnitude based on ranges provided; scope (centralized vs fully provisioned 80-site rollout) creates large variance. Many costs are scenario-dependent and some items (per-mission retrievals, destruction events) are episodic, reducing precision.
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