SCP Foundation

Secure, Contain, Protect

Research Departments

Orientation, part 5

The Foundation’s mission is to Secure, Contain, and Protect. While unified behind these goals, achieving them requires a wide variety of approaches. This has necessitated the creation of numerous departments, each specializing in a specific task, discipline or field.

Some of the more notable Departments are listed below, although it should be noted that these are not the only Departments, and a more comprehensive list can be found elsewhere.

Administration

O5 Council

The O5 Council, also known as the Council of Overseers or Overwatch Command, is the highest authority within the SCP Foundation. The Council members have Level 5 Security Clearance, giving them unredacted access to the entire SCP database.

While uninvolved in routine matters and deliberately separated from any contact with the anomalous, when O5 Council members do choose to intervene, their word is final. The exact number, identities, and roles of the O5 Council members is strictly classified.

Ethics Committee

While the O5 Council decides what is safe, the Ethics Committee determines what is ethical. Although the Foundation takes a pragmatic approach to moral quandaries, the Ethics Committee ensures that only necessary sacrifices are made and that the most ethical option is always chosen. Foundation personnel should be aware that the Ethics Committee is observing, evaluating, and passing judgement.

Recordkeeping and Information Security administration

The Recordkeeping and Information Security Administration (RAISA) is responsible for keeping the Foundation database secure and intact. RAISA controls access to classified information, deciding what to redact and what to reveal. RAISA also protects the database against intrusion and infiltration, and monitors inconsistencies in Foundation documentation to discern whether the cause is mundane or anomalous.

Foundation employees may encounter notes from RAISA appended to SCP documentation, often signed by RAISA Director Maria Jones and providing context for the information that follows.

Departments

Alchemy Department

The Alchemy Division of the Foundation’s Department of Science is often dismissed as a relic or a curiosity by their colleagues in more mainstream disciplines. However, alchemy is not simply a primitive form of science. Alchemy is the field of study specialising in the manipulation of the Aetheric forces that form the basic elements of reality. When conventional science fails to explain an anomaly, it may be time to consult an Alchemist.

Antimemetics Division

Antimemes are ideas with self-censoring properties that discourage or prevent people from spreading them. The Antimemetics Division exists to research and contain anomalous antimemes. These concepts, objects, and entities threaten normalcy and endanger human life, but are almost impossible to record or even remember.

Through careful observation, extensive training, and regular use of mind-altering mnestics, the Antimemetics Division is able to deal with the dangers that everyone else forgets.

Artificial Intelligence Applications Division

The Artificial Intelligence Applications Division (AIAD) of the Foundation’s IT Department was created to develop, study, and utilise Artificial Intelligence. This includes containing or neutralising anomalous artificial intelligences, as well as creating Foundation-Aligned Artificially Intelligent Conscripts (.aic) to run Foundation Facilities and be deployed on field missions in digital space.

Cryptozoology Division

Initially created as a coalition between the Department of Parazoology and the Department of Mythology and Folkloristics, the Cryptozoology Division handles all cryptid-related anomalies that have fallen into the Foundation’s hands. With its primary HQ based in Site-44, the Division carries out field research, lab testing and containment of parafauna that have already become prevalent in their local area.

Decommissioning Department

Although the focus of the Foundation is on containment rather than destruction, there are anomalies that are too dangerous, unpredictable, or resource-intensive to be safely contained. When all else fails, the last resort is the Decommissioning Department.

This Department reviews petitions to intentionally terminate anomalous objects, approving only those proposals deemed necessary and viable. The Decommissioning Department also provides expert advice on the most efficient ways to decommission anomalies, utilising humane methods while minimising collateral damage.

Emergent Threat Tactical Response Authority

One of the Foundation’s newer Departments, the Emergent Threat Tactical Response Authority (ETTRA) specialises in identifying and responding to threats, coordinating emergency responses to events affecting multiple Foundation sites, or even the entire world. ETTRA is also involved in pre-emptive operations, resolving previously overlooked problems through the innovative use of anomalous assets.

Fire Suppression Department

The Fire Suppression Department looks out for the Foundation’s most valuable resource: our staff and their wellbeing.

The Fire Suppression Department is always looking for new recruits capable of fostering a safe and supportive working environment within Foundation Facilities.

Department of Miscommunications

The Department of Miscommunications (DoMC) specialises in anomalies that manipulate language or communication in ways that make them difficult to accurately describe and contain. Existing at the convergence of memetics, antimemetics, linguistics, and metaphysics, the Department has the unenviable task of writing Special Containment Procedures for some of the Foundation’s most perplexing anomalies.

Department of Mythology and Folkloristics

The Department of Mythology and Folkloristics studies the role that the anomalous has played in the development of human culture, using this research to identify anomalies and advise on potential containment methods. The Department studies everything from ancient myths to urban legends, lost lands to restless spirits, ensuring that insights into the anomalous found in folklore are integrated into the Foundation’s body of knowledge, rather than being ignored or forgotten.

Pataphysics Department

The Pataphysics Department (also spelled as ‘Pataphysics) unites the fields of theoretical physics and literary analysis to study the extent to which reality itself is fictional. The department, operating out of Site-87 in Sloth’s Pit, Wisconsin, is responsible for the containment of narrative anomalies, as well as a number of ambitious projects that exploit the nature of reality in service to the Foundation’s mission.

While the Pataphysics Department is as fictitious as the anomalies it contains, a compelling story can take on a life of its own.

Department of Procurement and Liquidation

Founded in 1979, the Department of Procurement and Liquidation exists to facilitate the purchase and disposal of anomalous objects and non-human entities through legitimate or semi-legitimate means. Although focusing on the acquisition, storage and (when appropriate) utilisation or destruction of anomalous items, the Department is also involved in the hostile takeover of corporations and financial institutions with connections to the anomalous.

Operating internationally, the Department is headquartered in Site-106 in Miami, Florida.

Department of Surrealistics

We at the Department of Surrealistics are dedicated to the identification and containment of anomalies that cannot be understood with traditional logic/left-braining. It was founded on October 35th, 1491 by an intelligent swarm of blue swallowtail butterflies— and it’s all been downhill ever since, if you ask me.

The Department of Surrealistics utilizes agnostics and up-brained thinking to better understand unreality. The Department of Surrealistics is headquartered in a meta-metaphysical space called Site-⌘. The Department of Surrealistics dreams of you.

Please leave your preconceptions and teeth at the door.

Department of Tactical Theology

The Department of Tactical Theology is responsible for assisting in the capture, containment, and neutralization of theological anomalies. The Department is involved in the containment of anomalous items suspected to be holy relics and extranormal events believed to be miracles, and also deals with paranormal cults and Apex Tier Pluripotent Entities.

Headquartered in Reliquary Area-27 but operating worldwide, the Department has a diverse staff of theologians, clerics, and sceptics, with subdepartments specialising in different religious traditions.

Telecommunications Monitoring Office

The Telecommunications Monitoring Office (TMO) handles the Foundation’s worldwide analysis and processing of information gathered from telephone calls. This includes the routine surveillance of calls made to emergency services in Facilities like Site-14. Although aided by algorithms sensitive to key words, the majority of the TMO’s work involves human operators screening thousands of mostly mundane calls for any evidence of anomalous involvement.

Temporal Anomalies Department

The Temporal Anomalies Department deals with retrocausal, temporal, and counter-historical anomalies. The department is apparently a small subdivision of Research and Containment Team Δt (RCT-Δt), an agency that exists outside of the normal Foundation command structure. At present the department has not yet been founded, which means that RCT-Δt operatives have difficulty getting their credentials recognised by other Departments.

Department of Unreality

[Department Name] handles a very specific subset of anomalous phenomena affecting [Relevant Information concerning the Department]

[Additional detail]


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