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SCP-9973 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-9973
Expected annual
$1.6M
One-time setup
$1.9M
Annual recurring
$1.2M
Personnel
4
Immediate one-time neutralization and forensic actions dominate costs (approx. $1.94M), driven by archival/destruction, forensic analysis, and contingency reserves; ongoing baseline operations (monitoring, IT/SOC staff, legal, and research) run ~ $1.20M/yr with rare high-cost breach potential.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.9M
Contingency Reserve $500K
[#19] Containment liability insurance / reserve fund held against catastrophic damage or litigation.
Equipment $355K
[#7, #8, #9, #18, #20, #16] CCTV/analytics hardware and integration, endpoint/DLP rollout hardware, air-gapped viewing stations hardware, communications/alerting upgrades, COMSEC/insider-threat rollout, initial archival hardware/setup.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $327K
[#3, #5, #24] Forensic imaging media/lab time, specialized memetics/psychotech research program setup and auditable neutralization/verification testing buildout.
Initial Forensic Analysis $300K
[#4] Initial digital forensics / reverse-engineering team costs (3–12 month initial analysis).
Opportunity Costs $200K
[#25] Estimated opportunity cost of diverted senior researcher / MTF time and lost output (one-time estimate for major diversion).
Facilities $100K
[#1] Secure evidence vault construction, Faraday shielding, biometric access, tamper/alarm integration and climate control (mid-range estimate).
Legal And Coverup One Time $100K
[#14] Upfront legal/compliance/cover-story actions and immediate administrative redaction following incidents.
Evidence Handling One Time $20K
[#15] One-time evidence handling, chain-of-custody documentation and audit setup costs.
Record Keeping One Time $20K
[#22] Initial administrative record-keeping and indemnity settlement setup costs following exposures.
Certified Destruction $15K
[#2] Certified secure destruction of original media (redundant destruction methods, certificates).
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.2M/yr
Staff Wages $410K/yr
[#17, #4, #5] Salaries for IT/SOC analysts (2 FTE), research scientist(s) and administrative support for ongoing monitoring and research.
Research And Monitoring $400K/yr
[#5, #4] Ongoing specialized memetics/psychotech research program costs and recurring forensic/reverse-engineering efforts.
It Security Operations $60K/yr
[#8, #20] Endpoint protection, DLP, COMSEC operations and insider-threat tooling ongoing licenses and monitoring.
Cover Story And Legal $50K/yr
[#14] Ongoing legal, compliance, and cover-story support, amnestic budget and PR contingency.
Personnel Monitoring Services $50K/yr
[#7] Analytics licenses, storage and maintenance for behavior-analytics/CCTV systems.
Contingency Fund Annual $50K/yr
[#19] Annual funding target to replenish contingency/reserve holdings.
Red Team Exercises $50K/yr
[#21] Annual proactive penetration testing / discovery exercises to find similar anomalous files.
Training And Drills $25K/yr
[#10] Annual personnel training, drills and scenario exercises for site staff and MTF.
Employee Replacement $20K/yr
[#13] Overtime/backfill and temporary hires when staff are incapacitated or dismissed after incidents.
Record Keeping And Indemnities $20K/yr
[#22] Ongoing administrative costs for exposure records, HR processing and indemnity reserves.
Public Safety Coordination $20K/yr
[#27] Liaison, training and occasional reimbursements for external emergency services coordination.
Facilities Maintenance $15K/yr
[#1, #7, #18] Maintenance for vault environmentals, CCTV/hardware upkeep, and communications systems.
Supplies And Consumables $5K/yr
[#26] Small consumables budget: evidence bags, seals, PPE, batteries, temporary locks.
Viewing Station Maintenance $5K/yr
[#9] Maintenance and support for secure offline viewing workstations.
Medical Expenses $5K/yr
[#11] Baseline medical/emergency care fund for minor incident treatments (per-casualty major costs modeled in scenarios).
Psychological Care $5K/yr
[#12] Counseling and debriefing budget for exposed staff (baseline cases).
Evidence Retention And Audit $5K/yr
[#15] Ongoing evidence storage fees, periodic audits and documentation retention.
Mtf Deployment Costs $2K/yr
[#6] Expected average annual cost of incident MTF/site-response deployments (low baseline frequency assumed).
Logistics And Transport $2K/yr
[#23] Secure transport amortization / occasional armored courier costs (baseline minimal transports).
Data Backup Archival $2K/yr
[#16] Ongoing immutable WORM archive costs and geographically separated backup storage per TB/year (baseline small dataset).
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.2M/yr
94.0% probability / year
Normal uneventful year with only routine monitoring, maintenance, research and administrative costs.
no activations regular monitoring scheduled research activity
🚨 Minor Incident $1.3M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$122K vs baseline
Single-site activation or minor breach requiring MTF response, limited medical/psych support and additional forensics/legal work.
single activation MTF deployment small casualty or localized property damage
🚨 Major Breach $44.7M/yr
1.0% probability / year +$43.5M vs baseline
Severe activation causing site power short, major facility damage and multiple containment failures (as in discovery incident).
critical activation site-wide infrastructure damage multiple SCP releases / large property damage
👥 Personnel 4 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist 1 [#4, #5] Memetics/psychotech researcher or reverse-engineer supporting ongoing studies and analysis.
IT / SOC Analyst 2 [#17, #7, #8, #20] Monitoring/endpoint/DLP and SOC staff operating CCTV analytics and incident response tooling.
Administrative Staff 1 [#15, #22] Evidence handling, records management, audits and indemnity/HR coordination.
📋 Confidence Notes
Many line items have wide ranges and outcomes depend heavily on whether the item remains active or was truly neutralized; neutralization and documented incident history give some grounding but catastrophic impacts are rare and highly uncertain.
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