Item #: SCP-5161
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-5161 is now contained inside a fireproof chamber. Two CCTV cameras are installed to monitor SCP-5161's burning state.
A printer array outside the chamber will print material generated by Clarisse.aic, a large language model dedicated to the containment of SCP-5161. All such printed paper will be kept in a secure storage, and once needed, it is to be transferred to SCP-5161's containment chamber through a conveyor. The conveyor is connected to a feed port located directly above SCP-5161.
All text (and potentially images) generated by Clarisse.aic must be thoroughly examined before being forwarded to the printer to ensure that they don't contain any valuable information, especially any parts of this document.
An air-conditioning system, which consists of four ventilating fans, two oxygen gas outlets, and two carbon dioxide gas outlets, is installed in the chamber along with the cameras to ensure that SCP-5161 burns at a minimal, stable rate. If SCP-5161 diminishes to a dangerous size, the feeding volume may be increased to prevent it from extinguishing. Failing to do so will result in a containment breach.
SCP-5161 instances are vulnerable to all common fire extinguishing methods. In the case of a containment breach, all SCP-5161 instances should be located as quickly as possible, then extinguished save for one instance, and re-contained. Assigned cognitively-enhanced personnel should rigorously memorize this document, and check out and archive affected media and information after a containment breach.
Description: SCP-5161 is a cluster of flame. By the time of documentation, it is burning on a heap of 130.5 kilograms of paper.
SCP-5161 was discovered in a fire that ravaged the city library of [REDACTED] on October 2, 1961. When the local fire brigade put out the fire, three other fire accidents were reported to have happened elsewhere in the same city. After the last fire was put out, a new sequence of fire accidents occurred again, although this time smaller in scale and severity. This pattern continued for ten days before the Foundation noticed it and finally brought SCP-5161 into containment.
Following preliminary investigation, it was determined that SCP-5161 needs at least one instance to exist. If the last instance is extinguished or has burnt out by itself, SCP-5161 will immediately generate other duplicates, which are usually not in close vicinity of the original. The distribution range of those replicates varies from city-wide to worldwide.
SCP-5161 seems only to be able to burn on information-dense material, usually books, printed photos, and paper manuscripts, and in rare cases, other modern information storage media such as hard disks. Other typically inflammable materials such as wood and gasoline can only accelerate SCP-5161's burning speed, but cannot sustain it; SCP-5161 demands any type of inflammable material that carries human-comprehensible information to sustain, and new instances of SCP-5161 always need such type of material to ignite.
Information on all material consumed by SCP-5161 will become unintelligible to humans. This effect is contagious and can spread to other living copies of such information, and thus far, no means have been found to reverse such effect.
Furthermore, media that carry contaminated information will trigger acute aversion in people who have no prior knowledge of such information. Mnestics can only partially mitigate the difficulty in understanding and memorizing such information, even for specially-trained personnel. Thus, the only way to avoid SCP-5161's effect is to get to know the information in advance, since SCP-5161 does not appear to impact pre-existing memory, but this is still impractical since the exact type of information that SCP-5161 targets in a containment breach seems to be chosen randomly.
Addendum: Initial accidents caused by SCP-5161
| Series of Accident | Affected Artifact | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Approximately 1,300 books in the city library of [REDACTED]. | Result was not clear; the definite list of books burnt in this accident was lost shortly after due to the neglect effect SCP-5161 invoked. Follow-up monitoring thus far has found 271 published books affected by this event. The books were archived and taken off the shelf from the public. Amnestics and false stories were used to cover up this accident; same hereafter. |
| 2 | Two large boxes of manuscript in [REDACTED]'s house. Subject was an amateur novelist. | Most of the lost manuscripts were unpublished at the time. Subject suffered from acute depression after the event, and received amnestic treatment afterward. The few affected published books were recalled. |
| 2 | Five shelves of illustrated books in the library of an elementary school, [REDACTED], USA. | Impact was deemed minimal; most of the burnt books are the same copies. Curricula were modified to adjust to the loss of a few story books and physiology science readings. |
| 2 | One archive case in a local office that contains birth certificates of 49 individuals, born on 1978~1980. | All individuals in question seemed not affected by this event. Continued supervision is employed. |
| 3 | Three pop fictions and a few personal photo albums in the bookshelf in [REDACTED], a civilian's house. | Impact was minimal, and similar measures were taken. |
| 3 | 6 other incidents in this sequence were of a similar nature; logs abridged for brevity. | |
| 3 | 45 books in the library of [REDACTED] University, Berlin, Germany. | The burnt books were of 17 different copies and covered multiple subjects such as civil engineering, sociology, and medicine. |
| 3 | The server center in Site-15. | The fire sprinklers in the room were quickly triggered after the fire appeared. All servers were still fully functional after the incident. Impact could not be determined because it's impossible to discern the exact amount of data lost in this event. |