An exposed piece of machinery within SCP-3554.

Item #: SCP-3554

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Site-90 has been established around the SCP-3554 facility. Any goods produced by SCP-3554 may be destroyed or used within Site-90 at the discretion of the Site Director. Other use is prohibited.

Site-90 has been disguised as a historical site shuttered due to structural safety concerns. SCP-3554 is the primary purpose of Site-90. Exposure of Site-90 may result in an international incident between the GRU "P" Division and the Foundation.

Description: SCP-3554 refers to an underground canning facility occupying approximately 2 square kilometers underneath the Neva River in St. Petersburg, Russia. It possesses a single entrance with limited access to a distribution point, with no access to any internal workings of the factory.

The factory is fully automated and will produce approximately 80,000 cans of borscht per day, under the "Содружество" brand1, pre-packaged in shipping pallets. This occurs without any external inputs. Visible factory equipment is obsolete, and driven through unknown means. Production begins promptly at 8:00 AM local time, and ceases at 12:00 AM the next day. No mechanism of disabling production appears to exist - SCP-3554 has no external electrical source, and internal mechanisms are self-contained.

Produced cans are non-anomalous - the borscht contained within is described by test subjects as bland and subpar, but edible.

Historical Information: SCP-3554 was established in 1914 by the Imperial Russian Ministry of War, with the assistance of the Sub-Ministry for the Secret, a precursor the GRU "P" Division, in order to supply frontline troops. Records of the location, existence, and function of SCP-3554 were lost or destroyed in the Russian Revolution, during which the Foundation quietly took control and scrubbed remaining traces of its existence.

SCP-3554 was the focal point of Ethics Committee Case #784. See attached documents for further details.

+ Ethics Committee Case #784 - Integrity Code 367149 - Level 4 Clearance Required

- Authenticated

Ethics Committee Deliberation - 12/20/41

E-1: Alright, Case #784 has been opened. 2, play the complaint.

E-2 plays a recorded phone call

Site Director Bessonov: …never thought I'd ever have to call this line, but I guess I'm out of options. Regional command won't listen, and I'm not brave enough to stage a mutiny. I'll speak plainly. The city of Leningrad is under siege. I'm going through city records - Leningrad had a population of 3.1 million in 1937, and that's not counting any refugees from the west. The evacuation was haphazard - it's unlikely that more than half of them were evacuated before the damned Finns closed the gap.

Site Director Bessonov: The city is under constant shelling and bombardment. Electricity is seldom available, and temperatures are at most minus 20 degrees centigrade.

Site Director Bessonov: Don't take it from me - take it from the people of Leningrad. They've been instructed that this is a line directly to Leningrad Military District headquarters, and that the purpose of this call is to hear from ordinary Leningraders how desperate the conditions here are. They can express it far better than I can I ever could.

[UNKNOWN]: This is Gennady Isonovich, deputy director for Leningrad Ministry of Health. People are dropping dead in the street, and death tolls are reaching tens of thousands per week. If circumstance don't change, by this time next year there won't be a Leningrad, and they'll probably have to rename the fucking military district after Adolf Fucking Hitler, because he'll own whatever is left!

[UNKNOWN]: I. D. Strashun, First Medical - the medical staff and supplies are stretched far past the limit - our surgeons operate to the sounds of enemy airplanes, anti-aircraft gun shots and mine blasts. There's no food, there's no medical supplies. Any normally minor infection is a death sentence. Caloric intake even for high-priority residents is far insufficient.

[UNKNOWN]: The meat Daddy keeps bringing back tastes funny.

[UNKNOWN]: I'll be honest, I fought with the Whites in the civil war, and I've always hated you fucking communists with every fiber of my being. I have every intention of cursing Stalin and his fucking rubber-stamp "people's" party with my dying breath. All I ever wanted from you was to give a damn about your own fucking people. Lose Leningrad, and the rest of our glorious Union along with it, or hold it, and maybe, maybe we'll have enough left to rebuild.

[UNKNOWN]: Alexander Narmanov. Kliment Zeborov. Nina Sebwinsky. I don't know who these people are. I just know that I killed them this week for their ration cards.

[UNKNOWN]: If we are not killed by Nazi bombs, we will freeze to death in the streets. If we do not freeze to death in the streets, will starve to death. If we do not starve to death, we've probably been murdered by others trying not to starve to death.

[UNKNOWN]: Mikhail Samsonov, Ministry of Agriculture. We only have tiny fractions of whatever food supplies are required to feed the remaining military, not to mention the civil population! Something must change, or Leningrad is lost!

[UNKNOWN]: Forget it. Leningrad is lost. I'd say I hope using Leningrad as a sacrificial lamb weighs on Stalin's conscience, but I think we both know it won't.

Site Director Bessonov: I'm not willing to condemn half a million people to death when we're sitting on top of the solution!

Site Director Bessonov: I'll be the first to admit that this complaint is not selfless - Leningrad has been my home for 30 years. Damn the Nazis, damn the Soviets, but, for the love of all that is holy, save the people of Leningrad! Our mission is to protect humanity in all its forms - pledging secrecy is useless if after we crawl out of our anomalous hovels, all that is left is rubble!

E-1: Thanks, 2. Gentleman, Director Bessonov is requesting to expose SCP-3554 to the ChD AKN2, who would then use it to help relieve the siege.

E-1: 3, start us off.

E-3: I'm inclined to say no. We should not interfere in the mundane conflicts in the world, in any place, at any time, for any reason. Our job is to conceal anomalies and protect humanity from them - if whatever choice that presents itself forces us to break one to do the other, concealment always comes before humanity - or do we want to go back on our decision about D-class.

E-4: The line is a bit blurry here. We know the Obskuracorps are working on the Eastern Front, and whatever forces the Soviets can muster, anomalous or not, are obviously doing everything they can to aid Leningrad. At what point does the mundane end and the anomalous begin?

E-3: When we stop being able to conceal it.

E-2: I'm inclined to support on humanitarian grounds. Death tolls could reach into the hundreds of thousands - Bessonov is right, protecting humanity is priority one, especially with such a benign anomaly.

E-5: Ah, Yevgeniy. Willing to compromise for your own countrymen, but not those dirty foreigners in Nanjing3? Were we not in this room for a very similar question not four years ago? If you're going to sacrifice everyone on the altar of concealment, you'd best do so in an even-handed fashion, yes?

E-2: This is different, 5. You wanted to use [REDACTED] - and half a dozen other anomalies, and just hand them over to the Nationalist Chinese. This is measured and minor. That… wasn't.

E-5: I tried to compromise. To give them something, anything! Evacuations, food, sanctuary!

E-4: I remember you being pretty adamant, 2…

E-2: Forget it. It's not relevant.

E-5: No, I think it is relevant. Nanjing and Leningrad are in simi-

E-1: Cease this line of questioning, 5.

E-5: Fine.

E-4: You know 5's possibly the only person with more pronounced humanitarian tendencies than I, but here's the other angle - by all rights, this was a Soviet site, and we stole it from them in the chaos of the Revolution. They learn about this, we're looking at a major diplomatic incident. There will be hell to pay if they learn we held this from them, when they needed it most.

E-1: ChD AKN is an arm of the Soviet Union, who are a mundane state. Aiding the ChD AKN is tantamount to aiding the Soviets. I'm with 3, this is not our affair.

E-4: Are we not even considering the humanitarian component? Numbers don't look good - that phone call didn't sound good either. I'm willing to wager the Nazis are starving them out intentionally, them being as they are. We're just going to sit back and destroy safe food supplies while half the city starves?

E-3: This isn't our affair. We aren't the world policeman. We're just here to separate what is anomalous from what is not.

E-1: Voting deadline is today. We need to vote now. Aye to release SCP-3554 to the ChD AKN and Leningrad - Nay to maintain the status quo.

E-1: Nay. It is not our place to intervene.

E-2: Aye. The Soviets, the world would not forgive us for condemning Leningrad.

E-3: Nay. We are duty-bound to conceal anomalies from the mundane world. The moment we stop doing that, we stop being the Foundation.

E-4: Aye. We're looking at hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. I am willing to compromise a little secrecy for a little humanity.

E-5: 南京也不会原谅我们的。4 Nay.

E-1: With two votes for and three votes against, the motion fails. The status quo in Leningrad5 will be maintained.

Footnotes

1. Anglicized: Sodruzhestvo

2. Renamed to GRU "P" Division in 1942.

3. In 1937, Nanjing was invaded by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese war. In Ethics Committee decision #556, the Foundation declined to use anomalies to aid the Nationalist Chinese, in neither defense nor evacuation. As a result, Nanjing was subject to looting and other war crimes, with at least 200,000 in noncombatant losses.

4. And Nanjing will never forgive us, either.

5. As a result of Ethics Committee decision #784, SCP-3554 remained in Foundation control and Leningrad lost approximately 700,000 noncombatants due to starvation and exposure.