SCP-896 — SCP-896 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-896 Safe ~ medium confidence

SCP-896

Expected annual

$1.1M

One-time setup

$2.1M

Annual recurring

$1.1M

Personnel

Initial one-time setup is estimated at $2,087,000 driven by secure air-gapped hosting, legal/acquisition costs, and initial technical neutralization; ongoing annual operations are estimated at $1,065,000/yr driven by staffing, testing/monitoring, legal/communications, and medical/social follow-up.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $2.1M

Initial Research And Lab Setup $725K

[#9, #23] Initial neutralization/code-audit effort (6–12 months specialist team) and specialized measurement equipment (biometrics, motion-capture, lab instruments).

Legal And Acquisition $500K

[#15] One-time acquisition/settlement costs for source code handover, NDAs, licensing and indemnification with the original publisher.

Insurance Reserve $500K

[#22] Seed for insurance / indemnity reserve to cover potential long-term liabilities (initial capitalization).

Equipment $167K

[#1, #3, #4] Dedicated air-gapped server cluster (HSM/RAID), five secured desktop workstations + spares, and data-diode / secure transfer hardware.

Facilities $125K

[#2, #5] Secure server room fitout (racks, access controls, EM shielding, fire suppression) and one-time UPS/generator/HVAC upgrades.

Policy And Sop Development $50K

[#18] One-time policy, SOP development, Level-4 approval workflow and initial training materials.

Forensic And Archival Backups $20K

[#10] Secure offline archival backups (tape/vaults, encrypted write-once media) initial purchase and setup.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.1M/yr

Staff Wages $300K/yr

[#7, #8] Ongoing staffing: 3site-room security coverage (guards) and dedicated IT/sysadmin personnel (on-call/patching).

Research And Monitoring $150K/yr

[#9, #11] Ongoing code audits/analysis and baseline controlled testing program operational costs.

Cover Story And Legal $120K/yr

[#15, #16] Legal retainer/contract maintenance plus public-facing remediation/monitoring and takedown operations.

Medical Monitoring And Diagnostics $80K/yr

[#12] Ongoing pre/post-exposure exams, vitals panels, periodic MRI/EEG and monitoring for test subjects and staff exposures.

Psych Behavioral Monitoring $60K/yr

[#13] Clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, rehabilitation and containment support for subjects with cognitive/behavioral changes.

Long Term Followup Reserve $50K/yr

[#26] Annual reserve allocation toward long-term care, amnestics, reintegration or lifetime care for affected individuals.

Logistics And Transport $40K/yr

[#17] Incident response readiness logistics, transport of secure media, and rapid response equipment readiness costs.

Class D Handling $40K/yr

[#14] Incremental costs for Class-D monitoring, segregation, bodycams, and enhanced supervision procedures.

Continuous Threat Intel $40K/yr

[#27] Automated/manual monitoring of public repositories, mod communities and dark web for forks/derivative servers.

Supplies And Consumables $35K/yr

[#10, #21, #23] Archival storage rotation and media costs, secure write-once media and chain-of-custody consumables, and lab consumables (annual).

Personnel Restrictions Hr Costs $25K/yr

[#19] HR/admin costs from enforcing usage restrictions, reassignment, appeals, and productivity impacts.

Communications Security And Monitoring $25K/yr

[#24] Internal COMSEC audits, device management tooling, banned-device enforcement and connection monitoring to prevent bridging.

Covert Remediation Budget $25K/yr

[#25] Contingency fund for takedowns, surrogate releases or targeted misinformation if anomalous public copies appear.

Insurance Premiums $25K/yr

[#22] Ongoing premiums / liability insurance allocations.

Hardware Lifecycle And Maintenance $20K/yr

[#20] Maintenance contracts, warranties, spare parts, periodic desktop replacement, anti-tamper seals, and disposal fees.

Policy And Sop Maintenance $20K/yr

[#18] Ongoing SOP maintenance, training refreshers, and administrative overhead for access/logging workflows.

Facilities Maintenance $10K/yr

[#5, #6] Electricity, cooling, routine generator/UPS maintenance and HVAC service for the secure server room.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.1M/yr

88.0% probability / year

Normal operational year with no significant incidents; routine testing, audits, and monitoring continue.

no_incident regular_testing_and_maintenance

🚨 Minor Incident $1.3M/yr

10.0% probability / year +$200K vs baseline

Small security or technical incident requiring targeted response, short investigations, limited legal/PR action and remedial patching.

unauthorized_media_transfer limited containment breach public clone detection requiring takedown

🚨 Major Breach $2.6M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$1.5M vs baseline

Significant containment breach or major public exposure requiring extensive emergency response, large-scale medical/legal costs and long-term follow-up.

mass containment breach subject escapes with enhanced abilities public anomalous fork widespread

👥 Personnel 8 total

Role	Count	Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent	6	[#7] Six guards for 24/7 coverage (two per shift with relief), cleared and trained; headcount matches physical security staffing estimate.
IT/System Administrator	2	[#8] Two dedicated IT/sysadmin FTEs to manage air-gapped servers, controlled patching and backups.

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates derive from analyst note ranges and program-level judgements; many line items have wide ranges (legal settlements, contingency budgets, long-term care), so totals are approximate and sensitive to chosen staffing model and incident frequency.

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