"So You Want To Build An MTF" Mobile Task Force Mega-Guide
DISCLAIMER: Due to the nature of the material on this site, it's 100% likely that not every task force would fall 100% within how the examples in this guide look, since the obvious purpose of a task force is to respond to a given situation, and not every situation will be handled the same way. This is not an end-all, be-all to set limits on what you can or can't do. That said, if you want to incorporate some "hard" worldbuilding into an SCP or Tale you're writing, or get specific information on how real-world teams would do the things you see in the site's fiction, this will give you a solid look at a plausible operating force, along with a few twists, explanations, and variations, as well as how they might tie in with things you can research on your own to enhance your understanding and depth of writing capability on such subjects. The guide is also quite long, so go ahead and grab a soda, kick back, and enjoy the read.
This guide is intended to familiarize interested writers with some of the "harder" aspects, terminology, and nuts and bolts of how to fit a plausible, realistic Mobile Task Force into the otherwise fantastic setting of the SCP Foundation's universe, with an extended look at things like force structure, individual personnel, tactics, techniques and procedures, technology and equipment, deployment, and all sorts of things like that which could come into play, all with a handy glossary at the end.
To start, we'll start with a look at various components an MTF might have, and things that you'll probably see a lot of in the site.
Black Suits, Black Shades, Black Shoes… and a Pizza Hut Hat
MIBs. G-Men. Everybody's seen them in some form or other on TV shows like the X-Files, or movies like Men In Black. The guys that go out in the field, see if anything weird's happening, figure out what's going, collect what information they can about it, and report back with what they know so that something can be done about it. Boil it all down, it's pretty simple. They might be that officious-looking government type with a suit, shades, and a serious face that showed up at the local precinct, the bum in rags that started hanging out on the corner, or the guy that began work at that crappy tax prep office down the street last week. More likely, it's all of those and a few more that you may or may not see, and their job is acquiring what those in the profession call HUMINT. HUman INTelligence. In this context, we're not talking about deep-cover guys that the Foundation stuck in place eight years ago in the hopes that some juicy morsel might turn up ten years down the road, or a long-time informant embedded with XYZ organization slowly and steadily working his way closer to more valuable information, though our HUMINT guy might be talking to them as discreetly as possible, same side and all. These are guys that show up a couple days after your weird anomaly makes itself known, putting out quiet, low-profile feelers for info, asking around as unobtrusively as possible, trying to get close, trying to catch a glimpse. Now, let's say the guy we put in place a couple days ago DOES happen to see the giant, hairy monster that's lurking in the sewers, or he DOES wander into the warehouse the CotBG cult is cooking up their latest dastardly scheme. It'd be pretty shady to see a write-up in the paper about the local, mild-mannered McDonald's manager being killed in a gunbattle by what the autopsy suggests is an 800-pound gorilla during a daring raid on the local sewer main. He can't do it alone, or with the assistance of Tax-Man, Hobo-Warrior, and FBI-Guy. That'd look even weirder. Who's our fast food taskmaster going to call for help?
Morgan Freeman, Foundation Containment Specialist
Seriously, the guy's got some range. He can contain anything from toilet-haunting ass-monsters like the one infesting our sewer to the deadly Motaba virus that's threatening Anytown, USA. Just like our MTF we're putting together.
Take a moment to click over to the big ol' listing of Mobile Task Forces we have hiding up there in the grey bar at the top of the screen, and look down through it. I'll wait. When you're finished reading, you'll have seen a wide range of groups depicted, for the reasons you saw at the top of the guide, and if you look closely, you'll notice three things: one, what seems like a lot of overlap, two, what seems like some strangely specific specialization, and three, some groups that might make you think, "Gee, couldn't somebody else actually handle this while still offering some other capability?" Why? Because it's easy to forget that a lot of things can actually be handled with a single group, provided they're competently staffed, like our theoretical MTF would be.
What does that mean? It means that since the Foundation doesn't know when an SCP is going to pop up, or where, or why, or how, or what its characteristics might be, our MTF has to be capable of responding to just about anything it runs into, within reasonable expectations; this means you'd logically have lots of similarly-equipped/sized/trained groups sitting in hubs around the world, ready to respond at a moment's notice. Now, a giant black monolith that erupts from the ground in the middle of the woods and starts uplifting the friendly woodland critters, or a weird lake with skeletons that pop out are gonna have big buildings or fences built around them and turned into "military radar installations" or "restricted government areas." This is a job for the Foundation's finest crane and bulldozer operators, zoning officials, and the best bricklayers and electricians money can buy, not our MTF.
So what WOULD our MTF do? More questions! The answer is: lots of things. Quarantine a dangerous viral SCP that makes its hundreds of victims explode. Locate and contain or kill a wild instance of something that likes to eat people's fingers and toes. Raid a Chaos Insurgency front facility for the latest mindfucker they for some reason intend to further destabilize Somalia with. Navigate the wilds of Canadia's lush, snowy rainforests to capture a giant bear that shits golden turds and threatens to destabilize the world'a economy. A single group can do all of these things, again, if you develop it from a realistic perspective. This is where the meat and potatoes of an MTF comes into play in our writing, but before we get into the really detailed stuff about what the guys and gals handling things like this might be like, we're going to look at another critical step.
Cleanup
It wouldn't do for the McDonald's manager et al to alert Morgan Freeman to the ass-monster, then have him show up to the place in a space suit, shoot it to hell and back, cram its children into a bulletproof glass case, and fly away in a black helicopter while the Channel Five Action News Team does a live expose on the whole thing. What's needed here are liaison personnel who would be tasked with working alongside the governmental types of the region where our SCP reared its ugly head, making sure that people who don't need to see it stay away, and that the people who HAVE seen it step right over there behind that van with the big flashy thing on the back, and look right here please, thank you, POP-ticka-ticka-ticka, we were never here. This might entail pushing a cover story of a raid on an illicit drug distributor by federal/national personnel that locked out local/state/provincial authorities, a chemical spill or WMD threat that necessitated the temporary evacuation of civilians in the area, etc.
The Basics
They're taken care of for the most part, and we have a very general idea of the chain of events that might happen. Before we dig too deeply into the finely-tuned mechanics of what has to take place to make these things happen, we're going to look at a summary of steps that go into what we just read, some of which may not have been immediately obvious.
1. Alert / Holy crap, something's out there - Before our Mobile Task Force can respond in, well, force, they have to actually know that something's going on in the first place. This might come in the form of a news broadcast about something being weirder than it should be, a tip from a governmental type responsible for letting the Foundation know about shit like that, or an Agent having a little bird whisper something in his ear in the field. Now that we know something's up, we have to know more about it before we can act intelligently.
2. Begin Planning / Brainstorm - Once the MTF knows the vagaries of the situation it's about to embroil itself in, a loose framework of congingencies can be put into effect. This entails focused brainstorming of what they're likely to deal with given the sort of effects they initially observed. If they get reports about people dying from a weird illness, it's fairly safe to assume they don't have to defend Tokyo from Godzilla again, and can base a set of potential actions on the fact they're probably dealing with a virulent pathogen. To be sure, though, they move on to the next step.
3. Arrange Reconnaissance / Set things in motion - This entails planning for how to get McDonald's manager and all his buddies in place and then actually getting them there.
4. Make Reconnaissance / Gather data - Once they're on the ground and in place, they can get a solid handle on what's happening in the soon-to-be operational zone, and gather as much information about the area as possible. This includes info about the people in the area, the terrain, the sort of target they now have, its effects, and any ancillary data related to those things. Once all this has been achieved, they can pass this information to the people in charge.
5. Complete Planning / Put it all together - Once the MTF has actionable intelligence, the guys already there put the info back to the planners, and stay in place to keep information moving. The guys in charge can then finalize or revise the actions they originally considered, with the point of the previous planning being to save time, hash things out, and prepare potential actions so that as few things as possible aren't contingent on something they learned five minutes ago.
6. Issue Orders / Get ready to move - Once everything's hashed out, the men and women actually responsible for getting out there and dealing with whatever's threatening humanity today get the instructions for what to do so that everything doesn't go tits up as quickly as a drunk hooker at a bachelor party. Everyone involved knows their job, the job of the guy to his left and right, and the job of his subordinates and his boss, and how to do them. This way, if a team leader gets eaten by Cthulu, either one of his peers or one of his minions can take charge and do his job so that everything still happens the way it's supposed to. The most critical thing to know in this step, though, is WHY these things are being done. Information at this point is free-flowing to the people who actually have their boots on the ground. Think about it. These guys are all going to be holding very high-level security clearances in the first place, due to th fact that they're going to be running into weird shit as a matter of fact, they're trustworthy enough that they're in the positions they're in in the first place, and no amount of secrecy is going to do the Foundation any good if they can't contain the SCP because nobody they sent to do the job knows what the fuck. Knowing the why of the situation allows boots on the ground to make intelligent decisions to work toward operational success in case the plan goes to hell.
As a mundane example, let's say that you, the reader, are part of a special forces team that has to disarm a bomb. Your orders are to go to Point A, and wait for Team B to bring the bomb to your location. Something happens. Team B gets killed. They all get shot, or a chicken farts in Kansas, causing a chain of events that leads to their helicopter crashing. They never bring you the bomb. So you sit there with your thumb up your ass until the bomb explodes, allowing the Russians to take over. Glorious Soviet job, Comrade. Now everyone's eating borscht, and it's your commander's fault because nobody knew their ass from a hole in the ground. Now, if your commander had told you before you left that the intent for bringing the bomb there was simply that it was a safer location to attempt disarming it, or that it's just to improve security, and makes sure that everyone knows where Team B is supposed to hit, even if Team B doesn't make it there, you know these extra details, and if something fucks up, you can still go there and attempt to do your job. Phew.
7. Supervise and Execute / Finish what was started - This is the part where you'd get most of your writing done. The previously briefed forces move into position, assholes and elbows, undertake the designated actions that intelligence suggests, keeps the people supposed to be out, out, the people supposed to be in, in, secures the object through whatever means deemed necessary, and gets out with a minimum of fuss, or waits for additional units to move in to assist before GTFO'ing, and the Foundation has a new shiny Pidgey. BAMCIS!
Now, to look at how these things might get done in more depth, we'll take a look at the players that would have to be involved, the types of skills they'd possess in order to do their jobs, and maybe some of the gear they'd either be using or have on hand. In doing so, we'll also get a rough idea of the manpower and mobility it would take to make all these things fall into place.
Personnel
MTF Commander - This is the guy in charge of everything, ultimately responsible for coordinating his MTF, and ensuring all aspects of an operation he's responsible for go smoothly. All links in the chain of command ultimately lead back to this guy if followed. He'd probably be a highly experienced player drawn from either the guys that perform recon, or the group that ends up doing the heavy lifting, or with significant experience in both roles. This is so that he's got a thorough understanding of the entire process front to back, the limitations and capabilities of specific assets under his command, and how to exploit each of them to maximum advantage to leverage a success. Like a financial planner out to get rich, this individual requires a personal investment in the lives of the people under him, just as the planner requires a keen interest in the money he makes, and for several reason. Bad investments lose money. Personnel carelessly sent to their deaths cannot complete an objective. Personnel that survive and stay in service bring a wealth of experience, knowledge, and intuition to the table, and are invaluable for keeping less experienced personnel alive, and operate as a force multiplier for any unit. A man in this position would be capable of making gambles, but the risks are always minimized, the costs counted, and judged accordingly. If a life is to be lost, it must be spent, not wasted on a worthless boondoggle. A dead MTF can secure, contain, or protect nothing.
Recon Element - These are the first look into the situation, the eyes and ears that see and hear for people hundreds of miles away. Whether the job is simply throwing on a suit and flashing around a badge, getting into character with the local population and inserting that, shrugging into boots and utes and getting muddy in the woods, or putting on a hazmat suit, fake credentials, and wading into a disaster zone beside some CDC guys, these are the ones who are going to do it. They're the ones that play the part so that they can get in and figure out what the hell's going on, and what's causing it. People that can play it smooth in any situation, who are highly intelligent and perceptive, and who possess a high degree of situational awareness. These individuals would be drawn from personnel experienced in undercover operations. There's no school to go to to learn that sort of thing; prior undercover DEA/ATF agents, CIA case workers, CI/HUMINT guys in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps that fall into MOS's that require them to get out on the ground and make good with locals, form give and takes with local power players. In short, the sort of people that have to blend in with a populace and work a crowd in order to dig for the gold mine of information they're after. Liquid, adaptable, and silver-tongued. They'd need anywhere between two to a dozen of these guys. More people on the ground equals more ground covered, and faster. It's easy to fall into the idea of a James Bond getting out there and cracking thing wide open on his own, but one man can only be in one place at a time, and unless it happens to be in a knife-edge type of situation, the contributions of a group are going to have far more pronouced effects than that of one man. There'd be one guy in charge of "running the show" here, collating the data that gets picked up, and reporting back. Unless there's no other option, they wouldn't be on their own, because that's the quickest, most surefire way of ending up in a pine box.
Action Element - The people who actually go in and get shit done. Figure these sort to be drawn from groups like US SOCOM. Marine Corps Special Operations Command, Force Recon, Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, Naval Special Warfare Development Group, Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta, CIA Special Activities Division, FBI Hostage Rescue Team. High-level operatives trained to the limit of human capability in a variety of fields combat and otherwise, competent in any environment. Probably wouldn't see just random grunts or civilian talent here; that sort of thing would be fine in a static, relatively secure location, like say a Foundation site. Laboratory environments. Out in the field, you'd be looking at their Olympic-level counterparts, if a little more rough around the edges. Instead of that Harvard-educated guy in Site-Whatever that got a doctorate in the effects of long-term environmental dioxin exposure to the rhododendron population in Appalachia and that figured out some novel ways recombine plant DNA ten years later, you'd see a CBIRF operator, someone comfortable operating in a hostile or dangerous environment in MOPP-4 or a Level A suit. People that aren't going to panic and start bleeding from fifteen vaginas because the guy next to them exploded or because they saw something scary outside of a test tube, because they've been doing hair-raising shit that could kill them and everyone in a wide radius around them in a split-second for years. On the technical side of things in this category, figure Department of Energy response teams, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. People familar with the chain of command, how a crisis response is performed, the dangers involved in environmental exposure to exotic material threats, mitigating actions, and the skills and impetus to make things work. Even though it's easy to realize that nothing like SCPs exist in the real world, it's just as easy to take skill sets like this and apply them to their appropriate analogues in a fictional piece. There'd be literally dozens of these guys running around.
Support Element - The people behind the scenes that make it possible for an operation to run at all. Pilots. Drivers. High-level medical specialists. Armory technicians. Fuel handlers. Vehicle and aircraft maintenance crews. Supply management specialists. Electricians. Radio maintenance specialists. Chemical engineers. People that an MTF would require either in the field at some point, or back in "garrison" to make sure that their people and equipment aren't going to shit the bed when it's time to move. Again, it'd be likely to see former military personnel that held these exact jobs in these positions, all due to an intimate familarity with that occupation, an understanding of the criticality of such things and their role in operational planning and execution, and a solid capability to perform those jobs under extreme levels of stress or danger. For every two or three guys in the previous categories, there'd be at least one here.
MTF Standup Request
To: █████ █████
Attn: O5-██
From: Dr. ████████ ████, Site Director, Armed Bio-Containment Area-14
Re: Standup of MTF
In light of the after action reports and intelligence accumulated by various Foundation security detachments regarding SCP-XXX containment (and the combat effectiveness of general security units in such situations), I have deemed it prudent to request the commission of a Mobile Task Force (designate Armed Mobile Task Force Nu-7) with the primary mission of capture, suppression, and eradication of SCP-XXX, with the secondary missions of providing similar capabilities against biological SCPs of Safe-, Euclid-, and Keter-level classifications and neutralizing human aggressors hostile to Foundation personnel and interests.
After reviewing no fewer than 23 organizational models prepared by Foundation security coordinators and defense analysts, my staff and I have determined that the included proposals, if approved, would provide superb detection, confirmation, and termination capabilities in every projected threat scenario, in addition to greatly enhancing the Foundation's conventional rapid reaction force projection capabilities.
Analysis of cost-benefit models have shown that the proposed MTF (while initially costly) will provide far better returns vice the current policy of temporarily assigning containment duties of SCP-XXX to Area-14 security personnel, who have - to say the least - suffered tremendous losses of both manpower and materiel during recovery and eradication operations.
The attached documentation includes (A) an MTF unit composition/individual skill requirement proposal, (B) a table of organization proposal, (C) a table of equipment proposal, and (D) a proposed order of operations. Integration of the tables of equipment and organization will be left to the discretion of the proposed Mobile Task Force's commanding officer. The Area-14 comptroller has already completed tentative budget earmarks and liaison personnel have staged for the expedited delivery of all required materiel, with the assistance of the usual defense contractors and suppliers. Likewise, talks have been completed with sympathetic USSOCOM commanders, and the requisite personnel are on standby for immediate attachment to MTF Nu-7, with Area-14 billeting and other accomodations already in place, all pending your approval.
I eagerly await your response to this urgent matter.
Respectfully,
Dr. ████████ ████
Site Director, Armed Bio-Containment Area-14
