SCP-8302 — SCP-8302 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-8302 Unknown ~ medium confidence

SCP-8302

Expected annual

$1.0M

One-time setup

$10.1M

Annual recurring

$517K

Personnel

One-time capital outlay is approximately $10.1M driven mainly by the MELVILLE expedition (vessel charter), hydrophone buoy deployment and specialized equipment, staffing and amnestic program costs. Baseline recurring operations (neutralized status) are modest at about $0.52M/yr driven by mental-health follow-up, archival/IT maintenance and occasional hydrophone checks.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $10.1M

Hydrophone Buoy Deployment Initial $2.5M

[#3] Deployment of ~50 Foundation buoys including buoy hardware, moorings, long-range telemetry and integration into analysis systems (initial capital).

Expedition Vessel Charter $2.0M

[#1] Vessel charter (oceanographic research ship / converted trawler), crew wages, captain, insurance, small craft, deck equipment, accommodation and provisions for 30–90 day expedition.

Contingency Reserve One Time $1.3M

[#20] One-time contingency/reserve (15% of one-time capital outlay) to cover unforeseen complications, diplomatic costs or expanded operations.

Expedition Staffing Costs $1.2M

[#5] Salaries, per-diems and travel for expedition team (10–20 personnel, pro-rated for deployment, prep and post-analysis).

Expedition Equipment $600K

[#2] Towed hydrophones/towed arrays, ROV/AUV, winches, high-power directional speakers, tagging/neutralization gear (mix rental and purchases).

Amnestic Program Initial $500K

[#8] Purchase/manufacture and program administration costs for amnestic treatments for witnesses/expedition personnel (bulk treatment budget plus severe-case reserve).

Amnestic Rnd Initial $350K

[#17] Initial stockpile procurement of amnestics and seed R&D trial funding for safer/longer-lasting agents.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $250K

[#4] Acoustic-analysis workstations, initial lab bench and instrumentation for Project MELVILLE signal processing and sample handling.

Transport Logistics Initial $250K

[#15] Helicopter/small-boat charters, fuel, harbor fees and freight for heavy expedition equipment.

Secure Storage Initial $200K

[#11] Cold/cryogenic freezers, cataloging and access-control vault infrastructure for biological samples and recordings.

Secure It Initial $200K

[#12] Encrypted servers, air-gapped/offline backups, secure analysis workstations and classification infrastructure initial setup.

Necropsy And Analysis $150K

[#10] Secure necropsy, pathology, histology, DNA/proteomic sequencing and toxicology if biological material recovered.

Cover Story Initial $150K

[#13] Initial PR/legal retainer, preparation of cover narratives, settlement reserve and mitigation planning.

Expedition Security Overtime $120K

[#6] Offshore tactical detail, expedition security overtime and cover crews during MELVILLE operations.

Environmental Remediation $100K

[#14] Biological clean-up and environmental impact mitigation related to neutralization/removal activities.

Incident Investigation $100K

[#18] Internal inquiry costs, staff interviews, travel and legal support following the operation.

Med Support Expedition $50K

[#7] Onboard medics, medical supplies and initial medevac readiness for the expedition.

Training Initial $40K

[#16] Development of training materials and initial courses for staff and local responders.

Facilities $0

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Equipment $0

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🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $517K/yr

Staff Wages $200K/yr

[#4,#5,#6] Baseline monitoring staffing: small team of researchers/technicians (signal analyst, research scientist) and part-time security/operations coordination for neutralized follow-up.

Research And Monitoring $150K/yr

[#3,#4,#9,#19] Ongoing mental-health follow-ups for affected individuals, occasional hydrophone feed checks or feed leasing, and limited public-health/epidemiological monitoring.

Contingency Reserve Recurring $47K/yr

[#20] Recurring contingency (~10% of recurring baseline) to respond to leaks, adverse medical events, minor diplomatic fallout or urgent monitoring needs.

Logistics And Transport $25K/yr

[#15] Recurring small transport costs for follow-up field visits, sample transfers and occasional at-sea checks.

Cover Story And Legal $25K/yr

[#13] Ongoing PR/legal retainer for FOIA/litigation management and local government relations.

Secure It Maintenance $20K/yr

[#12] Hosting, backups, and sysadmin for classified audio/data infrastructure.

Medical And Amnestic Maintenance $20K/yr

[#7,#8,#17] Annual medical overhead, occasional amnestic treatments/refills and stockpile maintenance.

Supplies And Consumables $15K/yr

[#4,#10,#11] Compute/storage costs, sequencing consumables and lab consumables for occasional sample work and archival retrievals.

Facilities Maintenance $10K/yr

[#11] Annual maintenance, power and service for cold storage/cryogenic units and small facility infrastructure.

Training Refreshers $5K/yr

[#16] Annual refresher courses and safety protocol updates for staff and local responders.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $517K/yr

73.0% probability / year

Neutralized status — limited follow-up, archival maintenance, occasional hydrophone checks and mental-health monitoring.

confirmed neutralized only follow-up monitoring required no active field deployments

🚨 Active Monitoring $3.3M/yr

10.0% probability / year +$2.8M vs baseline

Program resumed to active multi-year monitoring and annual expedition cycle (buoy maintenance, seasonal expeditions, expanded staff and security).

reappearance of anomalous calls decision to run annual MELVILLE-style expeditions requirement to maintain and operate full buoy array

🚨 Minor Incident $1.3M/yr

15.0% probability / year +$800K vs baseline

Single-year reactive response: one emergency expedition, limited legal/PR payouts and targeted necropsy/research work.

local sighting or public report isolated adverse medical events small-scale media exposure

🚨 Major Breach $5.5M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$5.0M vs baseline

Large-scale exposure or complicated neutralization aftermath requiring major expedition, environmental remediation, large legal settlements and diplomatic mitigation.

public/media leak of evidence severe adverse reactions requiring hospitalization international/diplomatic incident

👥 Personnel 3 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist	1	[#4,#5] Lead scientist overseeing archival analysis and program oversight; part-time in neutralized baseline.
Signal Analyst / Acoustic Engineer	1	[#4] Ongoing analysis of hydrophone data and spectrogram processing.
Administrative Staff / Operations Coordinator	1	[#13,#15] Administrative coordination, legal liaison, logistics and training coordination for baseline follow-up activities.

📋 Confidence Notes

Mid-range confidence: analyst notes provide concrete historical expedition and plausible cost ranges, but many line items have wide ranges (vessel charter duration, buoy scale, amnestic program scope) and outcomes depend heavily on whether the anomaly remains neutralized. Estimates are therefore order-of-magnitude and subject to significant variance.

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