SCP-951 — SCP-951 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-951 Safe ~ medium confidence

SCP-951

Expected annual

$1.0M

One-time setup

$226K

Annual recurring

$978K

Personnel

One-time startup costs are modest (~$226.5k) for a secure locker, testbench, forensic imaging, archival hardware and initial R&D; recurring annual costs (~$977.8k) are driven by staff wages, amnestic administrations, incident response reserves and covert swap/distribution operations.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $226K

Initial Research And Lab Setup $132K

[#10, #13] ROM production & validation development and initial amnestic research/development (Class-A) one-time R&D and setup costs.

Equipment $72K

[#2, #3, #4, #5, #19] Testing bench & retro hardware testbed, forensic imaging hardware & write-protection tools, hardened storage initial ingestion, development cost for web monitoring tooling (one-time portion), and chain-of-custody database/software initial purchase.

Facilities $22K

[#1] Construction/installation of badge-access climate-controlled locker, reinforced locker, tamper sensors and CCTV tied to facility monitoring.

Program Summary Estimate $0

[#27] Program summary/reference line from analyst notes; no additional one-time cost added.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $978K/yr

Staff Wages $300K/yr

[#6, #12, #15, #16] Staff wages for human moderation/analysts, community/content staff, containment technician(s), and research scientist(s) (aggregated FTE salaries incl. benefits/overhead).

Large Scale Containment Reserve $200K/yr

[#25] Annual contingency allocation toward escalated responses (mass amnestics, buybacks, platform-level suppression planning).

Amnestic Administrations $130K/yr

[#13] Per-administration costs and ongoing production/distribution costs for Class-A amnestic treatments (assumed administration rate and per-use costs aggregated).

Incident Response Reserve $125K/yr

[#17] Annual reserve allocation for emergency containment, rapid takedowns, temporary server overprovisioning and unplanned buys.

Covert Swap Operations $52K/yr

[#8] Field operations costs (agent time, travel, chain-of-custody packaging, cover expenses) for covert cartridge swaps/retrievals.

Cover Story And Legal $45K/yr

[#7, #23] Legal takedown budget and PR/legal retainer for cover-story maintenance and contingency response.

Medical Oversight $30K/yr

[#14] Post-amnestic medical checkups, psychological support and physician-on-call / medical monitoring retainer.

Replacement Cartridge Procurement $18K/yr

[#9] Procurement and refurbishment budget for convincing non-anomalous replacement cartridges.

Web Monitoring And Hosting $15K/yr

[#5] Hosting/ops costs for automated crawlers, monitoring, false-positive filtering and alerting systems.

Cybersecurity And Ids $15K/yr

[#18] Firewalls, IDS/IPS, pentests and security services for hosting/distribution infrastructure.

Training And Opsec $12K/yr

[#22] Training for field staff and community agents in covert swap techniques, OPSEC and safe handling.

Insurance And Audit $11K/yr

[#26] Insurance premiums and internal/external audit fees.

Rom Distribution Infrastructure $6K/yr

[#11] Servers, CDN/bandwidth and covert distribution infrastructure maintenance for Foundation-sponsored ROMs.

Logistics And Transport $5K/yr

[#20] Shipping, tracked courier services, insurance for transfers between sites.

Supplies And Consumables $3K/yr

[#21] Batteries, cables, connectors, cleaning supplies, replacement small parts.

Secure Archive Backups $3K/yr

[#4] Offsite backups, maintenance and support for hardened storage and canonical clean ROM archive.

Chain Of Custody Maintenance $3K/yr

[#19] Ongoing maintenance for chain-of-custody record systems, secure audit logging and evidence storage supplies.

Archival Preservation $2K/yr

[#24] Periodic media migration, verification and technician time budgeted annually for long-term archive preservation.

Facilities Maintenance $2K/yr

[#1] Ongoing maintenance for climate control, CCTV and locker upkeep.

Research And Monitoring $1K/yr

[#10] Ongoing maintenance for ROM production/validation tooling and minor research consumables.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $978K/yr

86.0% probability / year

Normal year with ongoing monitoring, routine swaps, regular admin and maintenance; no large public outbreak.

routine monitoring occasional cartridges found and swapped normal amnestic caseload

🚨 Minor Incident $1.0M/yr

12.0% probability / year +$42K vs baseline

Localized publicity or a small upload leads to targeted takedowns, increased swaps and a handful of additional amnestic administrations.

small viral upload resistant hosts requiring legal action cluster of affected physical cartridges discovered

🚨 Major Outbreak $2.2M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$1.2M vs baseline

Widespread digital propagation or viral attention requiring mass responses: heavy legal/PR engagement, mass amnestics, large-scale suppression and emergency infrastructure scale-up.

viral platform-level spread declassification or public exposure mass uploads of affected ROM images

👥 Personnel 4 total

Role	Count	Notes
Containment Technician	1	[#15] Responsible for logging, handling and custody of physical SCP-951-1 copies and seized items.
Research Scientist	1	[#16] Part-time software/firmware researcher handling anomaly characterization and mitigation R&D.
Analyst / Human Moderator	1	[#6] Reviews automated alerts, triages false-positives and coordinates takedowns/swap ops (0.5–1.0 FTE equivalent).
Community / Content Manager	1	[#12] Online cover/counter-narrative operations, community engagement and content seeding (0.5–1.0 FTE equivalent).

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide detailed line items and ranges enabling a mid-level confidence in mapping and aggregation; however wide ranges for items like amnestic R&D/administration, covert ops frequency and large-scale containment reserves create uncertainty in annualized totals, reducing confidence from high to medium.

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