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SCP-9036 Archon/Thaumiel ~ medium confidence
SCP-9036
Expected annual
$25.3M
One-time setup
$51.6M
Annual recurring
$24.3M
Personnel
20
Estimated up-front establishment costs are large (~$51.7M) driven primarily by the emergency contingency fund, secure covert facility construction, and initial AI development; ongoing annual operations are substantial (~$24.28M/yr) driven by personnel wages, covert legal/cover infrastructure, research and monitoring, and physical/cyber security.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $51.6M
Emergency Contingency Fund $20.0M
[#17] Establishment of immediate-access, covert multi-account contingency fund (MARATHON-ALPHA execution fund).
Initial Research And Lab Setup $12.0M
[#3] Chekov.aic initial development, bespoke model training, simulation environments and research instrument setup.
Facilities $9.0M
[#1] Hardened covert facility (land, construction, Faraday/EM/blast hardening, SCIF/SIPR-grade fit-out, secure HVAC).
Data Ingestion Integration $3.0M
[#5] Secure data ingestion and integration layer: custom connectors, encrypted tunnels, engineering to access/normalize Foundation logs covertly.
Memetic Lab Setup $2.5M
[#9] Memetic research & containment lab buildout with protocol-safe testing rooms, isolation facilities and specialist test hardware.
Equipment $2.2M
[#4, #22] Compute/appliance hardware (GPUs/TPUs, racks, UPS, cooling) plus specialty secure comms and lab devices; combines #4 hardware and #22 specialty equipment initial purchases.
Offsite Datacenter Nodes $1.2M
[#2] Redundant off-site datacenter nodes, air-gapped cold backups, immutable archival vaults and physical security for backups.
Memetic Inoculant Production Initial $600K
[#10] Initial production and secure packaging systems for memetic inoculants and kill-agent deployment mechanisms.
Energy Resilience $475K
[#23] Backup generators, microgrid/integration hardware and fuel storage provisioning.
Legal Cover Entity Setup $275K
[#12] One-time costs to establish shell corporations, initial legal agreements and front-entity setup.
Amnestic Inventory Initial $175K
[#11] Initial stock of amnestic pharmaceuticals, secure medical suite provisioning and emergency antidotes.
Tamper Evident Storage $175K
[#16] Faraday vaults, tamper sensors, secure containers, and chain-of-custody systems initial procurement.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $24.3M/yr
Staff Wages $5.0M/yr
[#7] Covert personnel salaries for research team, AI ops, memeticists, clinicians, security liaisons, legal and logistics (assumed ~20 high-seniority staff).
Research And Monitoring $4.0M/yr
[#3, #18] Ongoing Chekov.aic retraining, safety/alignment research ($#3) plus long-term research grants and covert collaborative programs (#18).
Cover Story And Legal $2.8M/yr
[#12] Ongoing legal/cover-up infrastructure: shell maintenance, PR, laundered procurement/payroll and legal counsel to obscure program activity.
Insurance And Risk Mitigation $2.8M/yr
[#24] Annual reserves for legal liabilities, settlements, hush funds and other plausible-deniability expenditures.
Physical Security And Special Response $1.6M/yr
[#8] 24/7 tactical security, rapid response contractors, training, secure transport and equipment for clandestine operations.
Disinformation And Opsec $1.1M/yr
[#13] Ongoing internal misinformation, message management, payments/bribery and OPSEC campaigns to maintain plausible deniability.
Emergency Contingency Replenishment $1.0M/yr
[#17] Periodic replenishment and maintenance of the MARATHON-ALPHA contingency fund to keep reserves available and untraceable.
Compute And Power Ops $700K/yr
[#4] Electricity, cooling, cloud reservations and maintenance for AI compute infrastructure.
Data Ingestion Sustainment $650K/yr
[#5] Sustaining engineering, connector updates, and covert access entitlements for data collectors and connectors.
Cybersecurity Redteam $625K/yr
[#6] Ongoing penetration testing, adversarial robustness evaluations, insider-threat mitigation and periodic cleared security audits.
Memetic Lab Operations $600K/yr
[#9] Operations, testing consumables and specialist staff costs for memetic containment and testing.
Personnel Turnover And Recruitment $600K/yr
[#20] Hidden recruiting pipelines, sign-on bonuses, relocation, cover identity creation, retraining and exit extractions/amnesticization.
Logistics And Transport $550K/yr
[#15] Secure couriers, clandestine shipping channels, armored/obscured transport and relocation capabilities.
Audit And Oversight $350K/yr
[#19] Trusted internal auditors, independent forensic audits and non-duplicative recordkeeping for the covert program.
Misc Administrative Overhead $350K/yr
[#25] Covert utilities, travel, office support and everyday administrative consumables funded off-book.
Offsite Datacenter Maintenance $300K/yr
[#2] Periodic refresh, physical security and maintenance for off-site datacenter nodes and archived cold backups.
Memetic Inoculant Production $300K/yr
[#10] Ongoing synthesis, QC, secure distribution and replacement of memetic inoculants and deployment mechanism upkeep.
Amnestic Replacement And Ops $225K/yr
[#11] Replacement stock, clinician training, administration logistics and post-administration monitoring costs.
Training And Simulation $225K/yr
[#21] Regular memetic inoculation drills, incident simulations, AI failure-mode testing and staff training.
Supplies And Consumables $175K/yr
[#22] Specialty consumables, PPE, one-time-use media replacements and lab consumables for memetics/neuro work.
Vetting And Clearance $175K/yr
[#14] Psychological screening, re-clearance, background checks, continuous monitoring and retention incentives.
Energy Resilience Maintenance $175K/yr
[#23] Fuel contracts, generator maintenance and microgrid upkeep to guarantee uptime under sabotage or outages.
Tamper Storage Maintenance $30K/yr
[#16] Periodic integrity checks, environmental control maintenance and tamper sensor upkeep for covert storage.
Facilities Maintenance $0/yr
[]
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $24.3M/yr
80.0% probability / year
Normal year with routine operations, ongoing development and maintenance but no major incidents or escalations.
routine_operations no_major_breaches standard_research_activity
🚨 Minor Incident $26.8M/yr
15.0% probability / year +$2.5M vs baseline
Localized containment/obfuscation incident requiring targeted amnestic campaigns, emergency ops and limited contingency fund use.
localized_breach targeted_memetic_event discovery_attempt
🚨 Major Breach $39.3M/yr
3.0% probability / year +$15.0M vs baseline
Major containment failure or widely visible incident requiring mass amnesticization, global relocations, heavy legal/PR action and large contingency drawdown.
major_containment_failure lifted_veil MARATHON-ALPHA_unlocked
🚨 Research Scaleup $34.3M/yr
2.0% probability / year +$10.0M vs baseline
Significant research breakthrough or discovery necessitating rapid scale-up of compute, staff, cover infrastructure and deployment of expanded capabilities.
significant_discovery need_to_scale_Chekov rapid_hiring_and_procurement
👥 Personnel 20 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist 4 Lead investigators and domain researchers focused on SCP-9036 analysis.
AI Engineer / ML Ops 3 Chekov.aic development, training, inference infrastructure and model safety.
Memeticist / Neuropsychologist 2 Design and test memetic inoculants, clinical oversight for memetic work.
Research Assistant / Technician 2 Data curation, lab support, test execution and equipment maintenance.
Security Officer / MTF Agent 4 On-site tactical security and rapid response capability (covert posture).
Medical Officer 1 Clinical administration of amnestics and post-treatment monitoring.
Legal Counsel 1 Cover-story management, corporate shell oversight and legal obfuscation.
Logistics Officer 1 Secure transport, covert procurement and supply chain management.
Operations Manager / Site Lead 1 Program manager responsible for day-to-day covert operations and O5 coordination.
Administrative Staff 1 Covert administrative support, scheduling and front-entity paperwork.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst provided detailed line items and credible ranges for most cost categories, enabling a mid-range estimate; uncertainty remains around the appropriate contingency fund size, incident frequencies and classified operational overhead, so precision is limited.
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