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Bane (DC Comics)

Bane is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan, the character first appeared in Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 (January 1993). He has become one of the superhero Batman's most enduring enemies belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery.

In his comic book appearances, Bane is an international criminal with a mix of brute strength and exceptional intelligence. Born and raised in the Peña Duro prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca, he serves as a test subject for the super-steroid known as "Venom". Bane uses his enhanced strength to escape and heads to Gotham City, where he defeats and breaks the back of its protector, Batman. Famous for having symbolically "Broken the Bat", Bane is often credited as the only villain to have bested Batman both physically and mentally.

The character has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed in film by Robert Swenson in the 1997 film Batman & Robin, and Tom Hardy in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, and in television by Shane West in the Fox series Gotham. Henry Silva, Héctor Elizondo, Danny Trejo, Fred Tatasciore, JB Blanc, and others have provided Bane's voice in animation and video games. IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time ranked Bane as #34.

Publication history
Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan created the character for the Knightfall storyline. They developed the concept of Bane after an initial idea by Batman editor Dennis O'Neil.

O'Neil had previously created Bane's birthplace of Santa Prisca in The Question and the drug Venom in the storyline of the same name (published in the pages of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16–20, and later reprinted as a trade paperback). In the pages of Azrael, O'Neil introduced Bane's perception of Venom as both an addiction and the weakness responsible for his earlier defeats.

Origin story
Bane's origin story is established in the storyline "Guttenberg". His father, Edmund Dorrance (better known as King Snake), had been a revolutionary who had escaped the court system of Santa Prisca, an island country in the Caribbean. Upon Dorrance's death, the corrupt government decreed that his young son would serve out the man's life sentence, and thus Bane spent his childhood and early adult life in the country's Peña Duro prison. Although he was imprisoned, his natural abilities allowed him to develop extraordinary skills within the prison's walls. He read as many books as he could get his hands on, spent most of his spare time doing bodybuilding training in the prison's gym, developed his own form of meditation, and learned to fight in the merciless school of prison life. Because of the cultural and supposed geographical location of Santa Prisca, Bane knew how to speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi, Urdu and Latin. Despite his circumstances, he found teachers of various sorts during his incarceration, ranging from hardened convicts to an elderly Jesuit priest, under whose tutelage he apparently received a classical education. Bane murdered this priest upon his return to Santa Prisca years later. He committed his first murder at the age of eight, stabbing a criminal who wanted to use him to gain information about the prison. During his years in prison, Bane carried a teddy bear he called Osito ("little bear" in Spanish), whom he considered his only friend. It is revealed that Osito has a hole in his back to hold a knife that Bane used to defend himself.

Bane is tortured by a monstrous, terrifying bat creature that appears in his dreams, thus giving him an intense fear of bats. He ultimately established himself as the "king" of Peña Duro prison and became known as Bane. The prison's controllers took note and eventually forced him to become a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed all other subjects. The Peña Duro prison Venom experiment nearly killed Bane at first, but he survived and found that the drug vastly increases his physical strength, although he needs to take it every 12 hours (via a system of tubes pumped directly into his brain) or he will suffer debilitating side-effects, thus rendering him addicted. Bane escapes Peña Duro, along with several accomplices based on the Fabulous Five (his minions Trogg, Zombie and Angel Vallelunga/Bird, all of whom are named after 1960s rock bands—The Troggs, The Zombies, and The Byrds—and are designed to mimic three of Doc Savage's assistants Monk, Ham, and Renny). His ambition turns to destroying Batman, about whom he had heard stories from Bird. Gotham City fascinates Bane because, like Peña Duro, fear rules Gotham—but it is the fear of Batman. Bane is convinced that Batman is a personification of the demonic bat which had haunted his dreams since childhood. Therefore, Bane believes fate placed Batman on a collision course with him.

In Joker #8, it is revealed that Bane's daughter Vengeance was created in a lab by scientists.

Batman: Knightfall
During the "Knightfall" storyline, Bane, wanting Batman reduced to his weakest physical and psychological state, uses stolen munitions to destroy the walls of Arkham Asylum—allowing its deranged inmates (including the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, the Ventriloquist, Firefly, Poison Ivy, Cornelius Stirk, Film Freak and Victor Zsasz) to escape into Gotham City. During this time, Bane murdered Film Freak who acted as the Mad Hatter's mind-controlled assassin, kidnapped and unsuccessfully interrogated Robin who was spying on him, and had a bloody rematch with Killer Croc which ended in a stalemate as they were washed out of the sewer. Consequently, Batman is forced to recapture the escapees, a mission that takes him three months and drives him to the brink of mental and physical collapse. Exhausted, Batman returns to his home in Wayne Manor, only to find Bane waiting for him. Bane attacks Batman and beats him nearly to death, and delivers a brutal final blow in which he raises Batman up and breaks him over one knee, leaving him a paraplegic. Bane thus becomes the only man to have "Broken the Bat". This iconic moment is incorporated in The Dark Knight Rises, Robot Chicken's DC Comics Special and alluded to numerous times in the DCAU.

While Bane establishes himself as the new ruler of Gotham's criminal underworld, Bruce Wayne passed the mantle of Batman to Jean-Paul Valley, also known as Azrael. Ignoring Bruce's warnings to stay away from Bane, Azrael attempts to confront the villain in his penthouse suite. Azrael has by now added a set of high-tech, heavy metal gauntlets to the Batsuit, and uses them to shoot sharp projectiles at Bane. However, Bane is able to get the upper hand in the fight after using Venom and taunting Azrael, making him angry enough to lose focus and, thus, give Bane the opportunity to beat him. Nevertheless, Bane sustains deep lacerations in the battle and loses a great deal of blood.

Unable to go to a hospital, Bane increases his Venom intake to temporarily block the pain and buy himself time to defeat the new Batman. A humiliated Azrael returned to the Batcave and builds an advanced combat suit of metal, in place of the traditional Batsuit, with many chambers within the suit that fire razor-sharp weapons. Reduced to little more than a wounded animal fleeing for survival, Bane is no match against the "new" Batman. Bane is finally defeated when Azrael severs the tubes that pump Venom into his bloodstream, causing severe withdrawal. Commissioner James "Jim" Gordon, Harvey Bullock, and Robin watch in horror as this new Batman tortures a defeated Bane, who begs his adversary to kill him. Azrael denies his innate urge to kill Bane, however, and leaves him humiliated and broken physically and mentally for the police to arrest.

Mask
Further following the events of Knightfall, Bane recovers from his Venom addiction while serving time in Blackgate Prison. He rebuilt his body to its peak and eventually escapes from prison and returns to Gotham, where he fights alongside the original Batman, who has by now recovered and taken his mantle back from Azrael, to take out a criminal ring that is distributing a Venom derivative to street-level thugs. Following a victory over the criminals (and the revelation that behind it is the same doctor that performed the surgery on Bane years earlier in Peña Duro), Bane proclaims that he is "innocent" of his past crimes and urges Batman to stop hunting him. He then leaves Gotham, without fighting Batman, to begin a search for his unknown father.

Bane's search brings him back to Santa Prisca. In search of leads, Bane questions the Jesuit priest who had taught him while he was in Peña Duro. The priest explains that there were four men who could possibly have been his father: a Santa Priscan revolutionary, an American doctor, an English mercenary, and a Swiss banker. While searching for the Swiss man in Rome, Bane encounters Talia al Ghul and the League of Assassins and eventually impresses Ra's al Ghul so much that he chooses Bane to marry Talia and become his heir. Ra's also has discovered Bane's father's identity, but did not reveal this information to him. Ra's al Ghul then launches a plague attack on Gotham in the "Legacy" storyline, with Bane at his side, who is posing as Ra's al Ghul's henchman Ubu. Batman gets his rematch with Bane in Detective Comics #701 and finally defeats him in single combat. Disappointed by his protegé's failure, Ra's calls off the engagement to Talia and disowns Bane.

Following the "Legacy" storyline, Bane appears in a one-shot publication called Batman: Bane (1997) with the intent of destroying Gotham City using a nuclear reactor. Batman foils the plot, however. During the "Angel and the Bane" storyline, Bane ambushes Azrael, brutally defeating and capturing him, before getting him addicted to an even more potent form of Venom. Azrael ultimately escaped into the jungle with Nomoz and successfully, albeit painfully, overcame his addiction with his enhanced stamina and strong will. The weakened and injured Azrael managed to psyche out and defeat Bane before escorting him back to the Cataclysm ravaged Gotham. Once in Gotham, Bane briefly escaped during an aftershock before Azrael quickly recaptured him. Bane then surfaces in the story arc "No Man's Land", serving as an enforcer for Lex Luthor during Luthor's attempts to take control of Gotham under the cover of helping it to rebuild, but Batman convinces Bane to leave after a brief confrontation between Bane and the Joker. Following the fallout with Ra's al Ghul, Bane embarks on a campaign to destroy Lazarus Pits around the world, and in the process, encounters the Black Canary.

"Tabula Rasa" and "Veritas Liberat"
In the "Tabula Rasa" storyline, Bane learns from the Jesuit priest that there is a possibility that his biological father is an American doctor. In researching this issue, Bane comes to the conclusion that he and Batman share a biological father: Thomas Wayne, who had been close to Bane's mother during his time in Santa Prisca. Bane alerts Batman to this possibility and, during the time that the DNA tests are being performed, stays at Wayne Manor and fights alongside Batman on the streets of Gotham. Ultimately, it is revealed that Dr. Wayne is not Bane's father, and Bane leaves Gotham peacefully – and with Batman's blessing and financial backing – to pursue leads in the snowy mountains of Kangchenjunga.

Bane eventually finds his father, who turns out to be the unscrupulous King Snake, in the "Veritas Liberat" storyline. Bane, with Batman looking on, helps foil King Snake's plans to unleash a powerful weapon upon the world. Bane saves Batman from being shot by King Snake, but is mortally wounded in the process. Batman then saves Bane by bathing him in a Lazarus Pit, and leaves him with a clean slate.

Infinite Crisis and One Year Later
In Infinite Crisis #7, Bane fights alongside the villains during the Battle of Metropolis. During the battle, he breaks the back of the hero Judomaster, killing him. No reason was given for his actions in #7, though in Infinite Crisis' collected edition, one of the many changes made to the original series was Bane saying "I finally know who I am. I am 'Bane'. I 'break' people."

Bane resurfaces in the One Year Later continuity of JSA Classified #17–18 searching for the Hourmen (Rex and Rick Tyler), asking them for help. To win their trust, he tells them how, prior to the Battle of Metropolis, he returned to his homeland to put an end to the drug lords' government and in the process discovered that a new, more addictive strain of Venom had been created. In his furious carelessness to wipe out the drug trade, he was captured, and re-implanted with the cranial tubes, hooked to the new Venom, and now unable to shake off his addiction without dying from the withdrawal. Bane was forced to work as an enforcer for the drug cartel, unable to escape. Believing that Bane sought Rex Tyler's expertise in chemistry, Rick lets him approach his father, only to discover that the story is a ruse. Bane, who had never truly been addicted to Venom, had in fact wiped out the drug lords and destroyed every research note on Venom. He discovered in the process both strains of Venom derived from Rex Tyler's early research on Miraclo. He discovers from the Tylers that no written notes exist of Rex's work, captures Rex, and steals Rick's equipment, planning to kill Rex and force Rick to take the last of the new Venom, living forever as an addict. Rick manipulates Bane into using Miraclo and demolishing the building as he and his father escape, burying the mercenary in the rubble of the very same Santa Priscan penitentiary where his story began.

Eventually, Bane resurfaces in Santa Prisca and leads the country to democratic elections. Upon discovering that the elections were rigged by Computron, he uses his influence to enforce martial law, plunging the country into a civil war. Computron offers information to Checkmate who ordered him to rig the elections in exchange for their help to escape the country. Fire and Judomaster's son, Thomas Jagger, are sent on the mission, with Jagger debating whether or not to seek revenge for his father's murder. He fights Bane in order to allow Fire to escape, defeating him easily, but chooses not to kill him. At the end of the miniseries Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag, Amanda Waller recruits Bane into the Squad. In Outsiders #50, he appears once more to be wearing the tubing system to apply Venom. In Salvation Run #2, Bane is tricked by his fellow squad members, and sent to the prison planet. In Salvation Run #3, Bane remains with Lex Luthor's faction after the Joker's faction rebels against Luthor's leadership. He attacks Thunder and Lightning when they were attempting to feed Martian Manhunter. Superman/Batman #53-#56 reveals Bane is trading his Venom supplies with drug lords around the globe. One of his shipments includes a trip to Gotham. Batman, who was temporarily endowed with Superman's powers, responded by attacking Bane at his home. Not only was the Dark Knight able to easily defeat the villain, the hero nearly killed him with his far superior strength. Bane survived his injuries due to the enhanced stamina from his Venom supplies.

Secret Six vol. 3
From September 2008, Bane appears as a regular character in the ongoing Secret Six series. In the first issue, Bane is depicted as a stoic devil's advocate for the group, offering alternative points of view for both Deadshot and Catman on the subject of love. He is later shown to have an almost fatherlike concern for Scandal Savage's well-being. Although this is largely played for laughs in the early issues, the first arc's final issue displays the depth of Bane's affection. When the Six are attacked by an army of supervillains, a wounded (and seemingly dying) Bane's concern for Scandal results in temporarily breaking his vow to never take Venom again in order to save her. Bane is later shown to have recovered from his ordeal, appearing in Gotham City with Cat-Man and Ragdoll in an attempt to stem some of the chaos caused by the apparent death of Batman. During the team's several escapades, Bane reveals both deep respects for his onetime adversary and a painful yearning to assume the mantle of Batman, telling a trio of rescued citizens to tell people that it was the Batman who saved them. Bane ultimately gives his blessing to Dick Grayson, praying that "God help him." Following a near-disastrous mission, Bane assumes leadership over the Six. His first act as leader is to remove Scandal from active duty, not wishing for her to be endangered. In the latest issue of Secret Six, Bane's Secret Six and Scandal Savage's Secret Six finally square off against each other. Bane and Scandal engage in a one on one fight where he refuses to fight back until Scandal uses her Lamentation Blades to slash his throat. The card is ultimately used to resurrect Knockout.

Driven to near madness, Bane decides to lead the Secret Six to Gotham in an attempt to psychologically break Batman by killing several of his closest allies. The team kidnaps the Penguin, who Bane pumps for information about Batman's partners. In the final issue of the series, Bane ultimately decides on the Red Robin, Azrael and Batgirl as his victims. Before the Six can make their move, the Penguin betrays their location, resulting in a massive army of superheroes ranging from Green Lantern, Batman and the Superman family to the Justice League, the Birds of Prey, and Booster Gold converging on Gotham. The Secret Six stage a desperate last stand, but are quickly defeated. With the fates of the other Secret Six members left ambiguous, Bane is last shown being driven away in a Gotham police van. The ending of the issue implies that he plans to escape.

The New 52
In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Bane is re-introduced in the DCU by Paul Jenkins, and David Finch's run on Batman: The Dark Knight (vol. 2). As Bruce Wayne is unable to keep up with the various legal conspiracies involving Batman Incorporated, he decides to investigate a breakout in Arkham. There, he finds criminals being fed a modified fear toxin that is mixed in with Venom which makes the criminals extremely strong and immune to fear. He finds it being given to criminals by a new foe named the White Rabbit; when Batman approaches her, she quickly defeats him and injects him with the fear toxin, which she then gives to the Flash. Bruce then finds Bane to be behind the new fear toxin and combats him. Bruce manages to burn the fear toxin out of his and the Flash's bodies by getting pushed to the limit. Bruce manages to defeat Bane and knock him off an edge, but is left confused by the White Rabbit. Bane is then washed away by the tide.

Bane later appears in Detective Comics vol. 2 #19, in the story "War Council". There, his look had been altered to include a vest and cargo pants, and he now has an army serving him. In the story, it is revealed in a flashback that prior to his appearance in Batman: The Dark Knight, Bane had intended to steal a nuclear device to threaten Gotham City, only to have a run-in with the Court of Owls, who prevented him from stealing the device and did not want him to interfere with their plans. Later, after Batman defeats Bane, a mysterious figure confronts the villain and informs him that the Court of Owls had undermined his plans. Bane returns to Santa Prisca to lead his army against them.

During the "Forever Evil" storyline, Scarecrow learns that Bane may be the cause of the Blackgate uprising and will be their leader in the impending war and that the Talons were stored at Blackgate on ice. Bane, having escaped Peña Dura Prison in Santa Prisca, ships his Venom to Gotham City to be there for when he arrives. As he is traveling to Gotham, he orchestrates the release of Blackgate's prisoners during the Crime Syndicate's broadcast to the world. Later, on board his ship, he prepares his men for the impending war with Scarecrow, and with Gotham in the distant, claims it will be his. Bane enters Blackgate through the sewers to join the prisoners there. While there, he comes across where the Talons are stored hoping to make them into his weapons. While the attack on Gotham City begins between Bane's men and the GCPD, Bane also approaches Professor Pyg, forcing him to join his cause, and spread word that everything in Gotham is now controlled by Bane. Bane arrives at Blackgate as the Man-Bat and his fellow bats are attempting to transport the Talons to Mr. Freeze and is able to keep one from leaving. Bane retrieves Emperor Penguin for the Penguin as part of their agreement.

When Bane brings Emperor Penguin to the Penguin, the Penguin tells him that the Arkham fighters are not scared of Bane, as he does not instill fear as Batman did. Realizing this, Bane constructs a Batsuit for himself and heads to Wayne Tower to confront Killer Croc. Bane fights Killer Croc and is able to defeat him, setting his sights on retrieving the Talons. Bane wakes up the Talon William Cobb and takes him through Gotham where he fights various inmates of Arkham Asylum. Bane begins recruiting Gotham citizens to his side, offering his base at Wayne Tower as a haven to the people to escape the rule of the Arkham inmates. He tells Cobb his plan to turn the city over to the Court, in exchange for use of Talons at his disposal to be powered by his Venom. The Talons attack Bane's men, and eventually set their target on Bane. With Cobb's help, Bane is able to injure the Talons enough to activate their regenerative powers to remove the mind-control technology.

During Batman: Eternal, after Alfred is attacked by Hush and infected with a fear toxin, he is briefly transferred to Arkham before it is attacked as part of the conspiracy. However, Alfred manages to survive the explosion of the asylum and trick Bane into helping him reach an emergency cave Batman had installed under Arkham, the cave's defenses knocking Bane out and allowing Alfred to call for help.

DC Rebirth
At the beginning of the DC Rebirth continuity, Bane still lives in Santa Prisca. In Batman vol. 3 #6, it is revealed that he had been trading Venom to Professor Hugo Strange in exchange for the services of the Psycho-Pirate, who was helping him overcome his addiction to the substance. Strange then used the Venom to revive the corpses of several of his patients, as seen in the Night of the Monster Men crossover. In Batman vol. 3 #10, Batman, per the suggestion of Amanda Waller, undertakes a suicide mission to Santa Prisca aided by Catwoman, the Bronze Tiger, the Ventriloquist, and the clown couple Punch and Jewellee to take the Psycho-Pirate from Bane. Batman needs the Psycho-Pirate to undo the damage he caused to Gotham Girl, and each member of the team will receive some sort of reward for their efforts. Bane captures Batman shortly after he arrives, and then breaks his back again and throws him into the cell where he spent his childhood. Batman escapes, however, and fixes his back on his own. After allowing Catwoman to "betray" him and having the Bronze Tiger and Punch and Jewellee fake their deaths, Batman uses the Ventriloquist to incapacitate the Psycho-Pirate and tells Catwoman to break Bane's back. This act of humiliation and the loss of the Psycho-Pirate causes Bane to snap and scream for Venom from the prison guards.

In Batman vol. 3 #16, Bane has recruited his old henchmen Bird, Trogg, and Zombie in his quest to break Batman once and for all before recapturing the Psycho-Pirate from Arkham Asylum. Bane hangs Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Damian Wayne in the Batcave before setting off for the asylum, but the three survive. Bane's henchmen then capture Catwoman, Duke Thomas, Commissioner Gordon, and the Bronze Tiger to cut Batman off from his allies. Bane beats Batman savagely in an alley and believes him dead, but finds out that Catwoman has escaped, freed the rest of the hostages, and tied up Bane's henchmen, giving Batman a chance to flee. Enraged, Bane storms Arkham Asylum where Alfred is forcing the Psycho-Pirate to undo the fear he inflicted upon Gotham Girl. Batman decides to release many of the inmates to fight Bane and thus buy Alfred and the Psycho-Pirate more time, but Bane easily beats the likes of Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Amygdala, the Scarecrow, the Firefly, and the Mad Hatter, among others, before making the Riddler open a door to Batman for him. Bane and Batman then have another fight, with a bloodied Batman barely beating his nemesis. In Infinite Frontier, a partial clone of Bane was introduced named "Vengeance", hunting Joker for information of her father.

Bane: Conquest
In the 12-issue miniseries Bane: Conquest, it is revealed that Bane survived his fight with Batman, as he focuses on his criminal exploits outside of Gotham City. Bane and his trio Bird, Zombie, and Trogg, investigate a group of mercenaries who are transporting nuclear weapons to Gotham. Bane is captured alongside Bruce Wayne, but the pair escape together. Bane defeats the mercenaries and their leader, Dionysus, who is little more than a head and two pairs of limbs.

Bane and his trio decide to appropriate Dionysus' vast criminal empire. They then attempt to destroy criminal rival organizations Vor and Kobra. Bane kidnaps the infant heir to Kobra, but Batman intervenes and appeals to his humanity, leading Bane to abandon the child for adoption.

Powers and abilities
Bane is highly intelligent; in Bane of the Demon, Ra's al Ghul says that Bane "has a mind equal to the greatest he has known" (although he dismisses Bane's abilities as the cunning of an animal rather than the cultured, trained intellect of Batman). His strength is sufficient for him to lift 15 tons.

In prison, he taught himself various scientific disciplines equal to the level of understanding of leading experts in those fields. He knows ten active languages and at least four additional arcane and dead ones. Among these are Spanish, English, French, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Persian, Dari, Urdu, and Latin. The Bane of the Demon storyline reveals that he has an eidetic memory. Within one year, he is able to deduce Batman's secret identity.

He is also highly devious and a superb strategist and tactician. In prison, Bane also invented his own form of calisthenics, meditation, and a fighting style that he uses against other well-known martial arts fighters within the DC Universe. Bane creator Chuck Dixon's early tales portray Bane as a very calm, centered warrior akin to Bruce Lee; in as much that he draws strength through calm meditation and the spiritual energy of the "very rock of Peña Dura". Dixon imbued Bane with an almost supernatural quality when he explained that Bane triumphed in all of his prison fights by employing these abilities, while his opponents had only rage and greed to propel them. Multiple scenes in "Vengeance of Bane" explore this aspect when it explains that Bane's mastery of meditation techniques "made time and space playthings to him." A subsequent scene that reinforces this ability comes when Bird first comes to Bane for help because he heard from other inmates that Bane has "magic... the kind that allows him to travel beyond the prison walls." Usage of Venom enhances his physical abilities, including his strength and healing process, to superhuman levels. In most incarnations of the character, Bane requires a specialized tank to help control the amount of Venom which he injects into his body.

Although Bane had sworn off using Venom in Vengeance of Bane II in 1995, and his character is actually written as having kept that promise to himself, it is still not uncommon for artists to draw Bane as still wearing the tube leading from his old wrist device to the back of his head, as well as almost all media adaptations of the character, show him actively using the Venom compound. Writer Gail Simone explained these lapses in the continuity of Bane's appearance in an issue of Secret Six, in which Deadshot remarked that Bane merely kept his old Venom equipment with him out of habit, even though Bane states that he would sooner die than use it again. However, he does use the venom to save his comrade and daughter-figure, Scandal Savage.

Amalgam Comics
In the Amalgam Universe, Bane was combined with Marvel Comics' Nuke as HYDRA's Bane Simpson. Another version of Bane was merged with the Punisher and called the "Banisher". He is described as a "gun-toting, drugged up anti-hero who broke Bruce Wayne's back."

Kingdom Come
In the Kingdom Come reality, an aged Bruce Wayne mentions to Superman that Bane and Two-Face broke into Wayne Manor and destroyed it, after Batman's identity was exposed, leaving only the Batcave intact.

Elseworlds
Bane appeared in numerous Elseworlds including Batman: Nosferatu as a low-level criminal; a dead Bane appears in a brief cameo in JLA: Riddle of the Beast, killed by the Green Arrow.

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
In Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bane was mutated into a humanoid mutant African elephant by Shredder. Bane is eventually defeated by Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and returns to normal along with the other villains while in A.R.G.U.S. custody. In the sequel miniseries, Bane is chosen by a faction of the League of Assassins to serve as their new leader, in the belief that only he has the strength to succeed where Ra's has failed, but when Donatello attempts to travel back to Batman's universe to talk with him about his current feelings of inadequacy, the transporter instead causes Donatello to swap with Bane, resulting in Bane taking over the Foot Clan and New York after developing an enhanced Venom produced by Baxter Stockman. He is eventually taken down by the Bat-Family, the Turtles, and Shredder.

Batman: White Knight
Bane appears in the 2017 series Batman: White Knight. Bane, along with several other Batman villains, is tricked by Jack Napier (who in this reality was a Joker who had been force-fed an overdose of pills by Batman, which temporarily cured him of his insanity) into drinking drinks that had been laced with particles from Clayface's body. This was done so that Napier, who was using the Mad Hatter's technology to control Clayface, could control them by way of Clayface's ability to control parts of his body that had been separated from him. Bane also appears in the sequel storyline Batman: Curse of the White Knight, being among the villains murdered by Azrael.

title: Bane (DC Comics)


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Cathedral Peak (California)

Cathedral Peak is part of the Cathedral Range, a mountain range in the south-central portion of Yosemite National Park in eastern Mariposa and Tuolumne Counties. The range is an offshoot of the Sierra Nevada. The peak which lends its name to the range derives its name from its cathedral-shaped peak, which was formed by glacial activity: the peak remained uneroded above the glaciers in the Pleistocene.

Geography
Cathedral Peak has a subsidiary summit to the west called Eichorn Pinnacle, for Jules Eichorn, who first ascended a class 5.4 route to its summit on July 24, 1931, with Glen Dawson.

In 1869, John Muir wrote in My first summer in the Sierra: The body of the Cathedral is nearly square, and the roof slopes are wonderfully regular and symmetrical, the ridge trending northeast and southwest. This direction has apparently been determined by structure joints in the granite. The gable on the northeast end is magnificent in size and simplicity, and at its base there is a big snow-bank protected by the shadow of the building. The front is adorned with many pinnacles and a tall spire of curious workmanship. Here too the joints in the rock are seen to have played an important part in determining their forms and size and general arrangement. The Cathedral is said to be about eleven thousand feet above the sea, but the height of the building itself above the level of the ridge it stands on is about fifteen hundred feet. A mile or so to the westward there is a handsome lake, and the glacier-polished granite about it is shining so brightly it is not easy in some places to trace the line between the rock and water, both shining alike.

Geology
The Cathedral Peak Granodiorite of Cathedral Peak is an intrusion into an area of older intrusive (or plutonic) and metamorphic rock in the Sierra Nevada Batholith. It is part of a grouping of intrusions called the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite. Cathedral Peak is the youngest of the rock formations in the Suite, dating to the Cretaceous Period at 83 million years ago. Its composition is mainly granodiorite with phenocrysts of microcline.

Cathedral Peak was a nunatak during the Tioga glaciation of the last ice age, the peak projected above the glaciers, which carved and sharpened the peak's base while plucking away at its sides.

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title: Cathedral Peak (California)


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Queen Marcia

Marcia was the legendary third female ruler and a regent of the Britons, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. She is presented by Geoffrey as "one of the most illustrious and praiseworthy of women in early British history".

Mythical account
Marcia became Queen consort when she married Guithelin (Welsh: Kyhylyn) and ruled as regent for her son, Sisillius II. In her youth, she was a noblewoman and knowledgeable in all the arts. Queen Marcia ruled Britain for about five years after Guithelin's death because their son was just seven years old at the time.

Geoffrey says that Queen Marcia was a learned woman who codified the Marcian Laws, the Lex Martiana. King Alfred the Great was later to translate the code into Old English as the basis of Mercian Laws, believing them to have been named after the much later Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

Sisillius (Welsh: Saessyllt), came to the throne in ca 358 BC on Queen Marcia's death.

title: Queen Marcia


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Reflection seismology

Reflection seismology (or seismic reflection) is a method of exploration geophysics that uses the principles of seismology to estimate the properties of the Earth's subsurface from reflected seismic waves. The method requires a controlled seismic source of energy, such as dynamite or Tovex blast, a specialized air gun or a seismic vibrator. Reflection seismology is similar to sonar and echolocation.

History

Reflections and refractions of seismic waves at geologic interfaces within the Earth were first observed on recordings of earthquake-generated seismic waves. The basic model of the Earth's deep interior is based on observations of earthquake-generated seismic waves transmitted through the Earth's interior (e.g., Mohorovičić, 1910). The use of human-generated seismic waves to map in detail the geology of the upper few kilometers of the Earth's crust followed shortly thereafter and has developed mainly due to commercial enterprise, particularly the petroleum industry.

Seismic reflection exploration grew out of the seismic refraction exploration method, which was used to find oil associated with salt domes. Ludger Mintrop, a German mine surveyor, devised a mechanical seismograph in 1914 that he successfully used to detect salt domes in Germany. He applied for a German patent in 1919 that was issued in 1926. In 1921 he founded the company Seismos, which was hired to conduct seismic exploration in Texas and Mexico, resulting in the first commercial discovery of oil using the refraction seismic method in 1924. The 1924 discovery of the Orchard salt dome in Texas led to a boom in seismic refraction exploration along the Gulf Coast, but by 1930 the method had led to the discovery of most of the shallow Louann Salt domes, and the refraction seismic method faded.

After WWI, those involved in the development of commercial applications of seismic waves included Mintrop, Reginald Fessenden, John Clarence Karcher, E. A. Eckhardt, William P. Haseman, and Burton McCollum. In 1920, Haseman, Karcher, Eckhardt and McCollum founded the Geological Engineering Company. In June 1921, Karcher, Haseman, I. Perrine and W. C. Kite recorded the first exploration reflection seismograph near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Early reflection seismology was viewed with skepticism by many in the oil industry. An early advocate of the method commented:

 * "As one who personally tried to introduce the method into general consulting practice, the senior writer can definitely recall many times when reflections were not even considered on a par with the divining rod, for at least that device had a background of tradition."

The Geological Engineering Company folded due to a drop in the price of oil. In 1925, oil prices had rebounded, and Karcher helped to form Geophysical Research Corporation (GRC) as part of the oil company Amerada. In 1930, Karcher left GRC and helped to found Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI). GSI was one of the most successful seismic contracting companies for over 50 years and was the parent of an even more successful company, Texas Instruments. Early GSI employee Henry Salvatori left that company in 1933 to found another major seismic contractor, Western Geophysical. Many other companies using reflection seismology in hydrocarbon exploration, hydrology, engineering studies, and other applications have been formed since the method was first invented. Major service companies in recent years have included CGG, ION Geophysical, Petroleum Geo-Services, Polarcus, TGS and WesternGeco, but since the oil price crash of 2015, providers of seismic services have continued to struggle financially such as Polarcus, whilst companies that were seismic acquisition industry leaders just ten years ago such as CGG and WesternGeco have now removed themselves from the seismic acquisition environment entirely and restructured to focus upon their existing seismic data libraries, seismic data management and non-seismic related oilfield services.

Summary of the method
Seismic waves are mechanical perturbations that travel in the Earth at a speed governed by the acoustic impedance of the medium in which they are travelling. The acoustic (or seismic) impedance, Z, is defined by the equation:

 * $$Z=v\rho \ $$,

where v is the seismic wave velocity and ρ (Greek rho) is the density of the rock.

When a seismic wave travelling through the Earth encounters an interface between two materials with different acoustic impedances, some of the wave energy will reflect off the interface and some will refract through the interface. At its most basic, the seismic reflection technique consists of generating seismic waves and measuring the time taken for the waves to travel from the source, reflect off an interface and be detected by an array of receivers (as geophones or hydrophones) at the surface. Knowing the travel times from the source to various receivers, and the velocity of the seismic waves, a geophysicist then attempts to reconstruct the pathways of the waves in order to build up an image of the subsurface.

In common with other geophysical methods, reflection seismology may be seen as a type of inverse problem. That is, given a set of data collected by experimentation and the physical laws that apply to the experiment, the experimenter wishes to develop an abstract model of the physical system being studied. In the case of reflection seismology, the experimental data are recorded seismograms, and the desired result is a model of the structure and physical properties of the Earth's crust. In common with other types of inverse problems, the results obtained from reflection seismology are usually not unique (more than one model adequately fits the data) and may be sensitive to relatively small errors in data collection, processing, or analysis. For these reasons, great care must be taken when interpreting the results of a reflection seismic survey.

The reflection experiment
The general principle of seismic reflection is to send elastic waves (using an energy source such as dynamite explosion or Vibroseis) into the Earth, where each layer within the Earth reflects a portion of the wave's energy back and allows the rest to refract through. These reflected energy waves are recorded over a predetermined time period (called the record length) by receivers that detect the motion of the ground in which they are placed. On land, the typical receiver used is a small, portable instrument known as a geophone, which converts ground motion into an analogue electrical signal. In water, hydrophones are used, which convert pressure changes into electrical signals. Each receiver's response to a single shot is known as a “trace” and is recorded onto a data storage device, then the shot location is moved along and the process is repeated. Typically, the recorded signals are subjected to significant amounts of signal processing.

Reflection and transmission at normal incidence
When a seismic P-wave encounters a boundary between two materials with different acoustic impedances, some of the energy in the wave will be reflected at the boundary, while some of the energy will be transmitted through the boundary. The amplitude of the reflected wave is predicted by multiplying the amplitude of the incident wave by the seismic reflection coefficient $$R$$, determined by the impedance contrast between the two materials.

For a wave that hits a boundary at normal incidence (head-on), the expression for the reflection coefficient is simply

 * $$R=\frac{Z_2 - Z_1}{Z_2 + Z_1}$$,

where $$Z_1$$ and $$Z_2$$ are the impedance of the first and second medium, respectively.

Similarly, the amplitude of the incident wave is multiplied by the transmission coefficient $$T$$ to predict the amplitude of the wave transmitted through the boundary. The formula for the normal-incidence transmission coefficient is

 * $$T=1+R=\frac{2 Z_2}{(Z_2 + Z_1)}$$.

As the sum of the energies of the reflected and transmitted wave has to be equal to the energy of the incident wave, it is easy to show that

 * $$\frac{R^2}{Z_1}+\frac{T^2}{Z_2}=\frac{Z_2(Z_2 - Z_1)^2+4Z_1Z_2^2}{Z_1Z_2(Z_1+Z_2)^2}=\frac{1}{Z_1}$$.

By observing changes in the strength of reflections, seismologists can infer changes in the seismic impedances. In turn, they use this information to infer changes in the properties of the rocks at the interface, such as density and wave velocity, by means of seismic inversion.

Reflection and transmission at non-normal incidence

The situation becomes much more complicated in the case of non-normal incidence, due to mode conversion between P-waves and S-waves, and is described by the Zoeppritz equations. In 1919, Karl Zoeppritz derived 4 equations that determine the amplitudes of reflected and refracted waves at a planar interface for an incident P-wave as a function of the angle of incidence and six independent elastic parameters. These equations have 4 unknowns and can be solved but they do not give an intuitive understanding for how the reflection amplitudes vary with the rock properties involved.

The reflection and transmission coefficients, which govern the amplitude of each reflection, vary with angle of incidence and can be used to obtain information about (among many other things) the fluid content of the rock. Practical use of non-normal incidence phenomena, known as AVO (see amplitude versus offset) has been facilitated by theoretical work to derive workable approximations to the Zoeppritz equations and by advances in computer processing capacity. AVO studies attempt with some success to predict the fluid content (oil, gas, or water) of potential reservoirs, to lower the risk of drilling unproductive wells and to identify new petroleum reservoirs. The 3-term simplification of the Zoeppritz equations that is most commonly used was developed in 1985 and is known as the "Shuey equation". A further 2-term simplification is known as the "Shuey approximation", is valid for angles of incidence less than 30 degrees (usually the case in seismic surveys) and is given below:

 * $$R(\theta ) = R(0) + G \sin^2 \theta $$

where $$R(0)$$ = reflection coefficient at zero-offset (normal incidence); $$G$$ = AVO gradient, describing reflection behaviour at intermediate offsets and $$(\theta)$$ = angle of incidence. This equation reduces to that of normal incidence at $$(\theta)$$=0.

Interpretation of reflections
The time it takes for a reflection from a particular boundary to arrive at the geophone is called the travel time. If the seismic wave velocity in the rock is known, then the travel time may be used to estimate the depth to the reflector. For a simple vertically traveling wave, the travel time $$t$$ from the surface to the reflector and back is called the Two-Way Time (TWT) and is given by the formula

 * $$t = 2\frac{d}{V}$$,

where $$d$$ is the depth of the reflector and $$V$$ is the wave velocity in the rock.

A series of apparently related reflections on several seismograms is often referred to as a reflection event. By correlating reflection events, a seismologist can create an estimated cross-section of the geologic structure that generated the reflections.

Sources of noise
In addition to reflections off interfaces within the subsurface, there are a number of other seismic responses detected by receivers and are either unwanted or unneeded:

Air wave
The airwave travels directly from the source to the receiver and is an example of coherent noise. It is easily recognizable because it travels at a speed of 330 m/s, the speed of sound in air.

Ground roll / Rayleigh wave / Scholte wave / Surface wave
A Rayleigh wave typically propagates along a free surface of a solid, but the elastic constants and density of air are very low compared to those of rocks so the surface of the Earth is approximately a free surface. Low velocity, low frequency and high amplitude Rayleigh waves are frequently present on a seismic record and can obscure signal, degrading overall data quality. They are known within the industry as ‘Ground Roll’ and are an example of coherent noise that can be attenuated with a carefully designed seismic survey. The Scholte wave is similar to ground roll but occurs at the sea-floor (fluid/solid interface) and it can possibly obscure and mask deep reflections in marine seismic records. The velocity of these waves varies with wavelength, so they are said to be dispersive and the shape of the wavetrain varies with distance.

Refraction / Head wave / Conical wave
A head wave refracts at an interface, travelling along it, within the lower medium and produces oscillatory motion parallel to the interface. This motion causes a disturbance in the upper medium that is detected on the surface. The same phenomenon is utilised in seismic refraction.

Multiple reflection
An event on the seismic record that has incurred more than one reflection is called a multiple. Multiples can be either short-path (peg-leg) or long-path, depending upon whether they interfere with primary reflections or not.

Multiples from the bottom of a body of water and the air-water interface are common in marine seismic data, and are suppressed by seismic processing.

Cultural noise
Cultural noise includes noise from weather effects, planes, helicopters, electrical pylons, and ships (in the case of marine surveys), all of which can be detected by the receivers.

Electromagnetic noise
Particularly important in urban environments (i.e. power lines), it is hardly removable. Some particular sensor as microelectromechanical systems (MEMs) are used to decrease these interference when in such environments.

2D versus 3D
The original seismic reflection method involved acquisition along a two-dimensional vertical profile through the crust, now referred to as 2D data. This approach worked well with areas of relatively simple geological structure where dips are low. However, in areas of more complex structure, the 2D technique failed to properly image the subsurface due to out of plane reflections and other artefacts. Spatial aliasing is also an issue with 2D data due to the lack of resolution between the lines. Beginning with initial experiments in the 1960s, the seismic technique explored the possibility of full three-dimensional acquisition and processing. In the late 1970s the first large 3D datasets were acquired and by the 1980s and 1990s this method became widely used.

Applications
Reflection seismology is used extensively in a number of fields and its applications can be categorised into three groups, each defined by their depth of investigation:

A method similar to reflection seismology which uses electromagnetic instead of elastic waves, and has a smaller depth of penetration, is known as Ground-penetrating radar or GPR.
 * Near-surface applications – an application that aims to understand geology at depths of up to approximately 1 km, typically used for engineering and environmental surveys, as well as coal and mineral exploration.  A more recently developed application for seismic reflection is for geothermal energy surveys, although the depth of investigation can be up to 2 km deep in this case.
 * Hydrocarbon exploration – used by the hydrocarbon industry to provide a high resolution map of acoustic impedance contrasts at depths of up to 10 km within the subsurface. This can be combined with seismic attribute analysis and other exploration geophysics tools and used to help geologists build a geological model of the area of interest.
 * Mineral exploration – The traditional approach to near-surface (<300 m) mineral exploration has been to employ geological mapping, geochemical analysis and the use of aerial and ground-based potential field methods, in particular for greenfield exploration, in the recent decades reflection seismic has become a valid method for exploration in hard-rock environments.
 * Crustal studies – investigation into the structure and origin of the Earth's crust, through to the Moho discontinuity and beyond, at depths of up to 100 km.

Hydrocarbon exploration
Reflection seismology, more commonly referred to as "seismic reflection" or abbreviated to "seismic" within the hydrocarbon industry, is used by petroleum geologists and geophysicists to map and interpret potential petroleum reservoirs. The size and scale of seismic surveys has increased alongside the significant increases in computer power since the late 20th century. This led the seismic industry from laboriously – and therefore rarely – acquiring small 3D surveys in the 1980s to routinely acquiring large-scale high resolution 3D surveys. The goals and basic principles have remained the same, but the methods have slightly changed over the years.

The primary environments for seismic hydrocarbon exploration are land, the transition zone and marine:

Land – The land environment covers almost every type of terrain that exists on Earth, each bringing its own logistical problems. Examples of this environment are jungle, desert, arctic tundra, forest, urban settings, mountain regions and savannah.

Transition Zone (TZ) – The transition zone is considered to be the area where the land meets the sea, presenting unique challenges because the water is too shallow for large seismic vessels but too deep for the use of traditional methods of acquisition on land. Examples of this environment are river deltas, swamps and marshes, coral reefs, beach tidal areas and the surf zone. Transition zone seismic crews will often work on land, in the transition zone and in the shallow water marine environment on a single project in order to obtain a complete map of the subsurface.

Marine – The marine zone is either in shallow water areas (water depths of less than 30 to 40 metres would normally be considered shallow water areas for 3D marine seismic operations) or in the deep water areas normally associated with the seas and oceans (such as the Gulf of Mexico).

Seismic data acquisition
Seismic data acquisition is the first of the three distinct stages of seismic exploration, the other two being seismic data processing and seismic interpretation.

Seismic surveys are typically designed by National oil companies and International oil companies who hire service companies such as CGG, Petroleum Geo-Services and WesternGeco to acquire them. Another company is then hired to process the data, although this can often be the same company that acquired the survey. Finally the finished seismic volume is delivered to the oil company so that it can be geologically interpreted.

Land survey acquisition
Land seismic surveys tend to be large entities, requiring hundreds of tons of equipment and employing anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people, deployed over vast areas for many months. There are a number of options available for a controlled seismic source in a land survey and particularly common choices are Vibroseis and dynamite. Vibroseis is a non-impulsive source that is cheap and efficient but requires flat ground to operate on, making its use more difficult in undeveloped areas. The method comprises one or more heavy, all-terrain vehicles lowering a steel plate onto the ground, which is then vibrated with a specific frequency distribution and amplitude. It produces a low energy density, allowing it to be used in cities and other built-up areas where dynamite would cause significant damage, though the large weight attached to a Vibroseis truck can cause its own environmental damage. Dynamite is an impulsive source that is regarded as the ideal geophysical source due to it producing an almost perfect impulse function but it has obvious environmental drawbacks. For a long time, it was the only seismic source available until weight dropping was introduced around 1954, allowing geophysicists to make a trade-off between image quality and environmental damage. Compared to Vibroseis, dynamite is also operationally inefficient because each source point needs to be drilled and the dynamite placed in the hole.

Unlike in marine seismic surveys, land geometries are not limited to narrow paths of acquisition, meaning that a wide range of offsets and azimuths is usually acquired and the largest challenge is increasing the rate of acquisition. The rate of production is obviously controlled by how fast the source (Vibroseis in this case) can be fired and then move on to the next source location. Attempts have been made to use multiple seismic sources at the same time in order to increase survey efficiency and a successful example of this technique is Independent Simultaneous Sweeping (ISS).

A land seismic survey requires substantial logistical support; in addition to the day-to-day seismic operation itself, there must also be support for the main camp for resupply activities, medical support, camp and equipment maintenance tasks, security, personnel crew changes and waste management. Some operations may also operate smaller 'fly' camps that are set up remotely where the distance is too far to travel back to the main camp on a daily basis and these will also need logistical support on a frequent basis.

Marine survey acquisition (Towed Streamer)

Towed streamer marine seismic surveys are conducted using specialist seismic vessels that tow one or more cables known as streamers just below the surface typically between 5 and 15 metres depending upon the project specification that contain groups of hydrophones (or receiver groups) along their length (see diagram). Modern streamer vessels normally tow multiple streamers astern which can be secured to underwater wings, commonly known as doors or vanes that allow a number of streamers to be towed out wide to the port and starboard side of a vessel. Current streamer towing technology such as seen on the PGS operated Ramform series of vessels built between 2013 and 2017 has pushed the number of streamers up to 24 in total on these vessels. For vessels of this type of capacity, it is not uncommon for a streamer spread across the stern from 'door to door' to be in excess on one nautical mile. The precise configuration of the streamers on any project in terms of streamer length, streamer separation, hydrophone group length and the offset or distance between the source centre and the receivers will be dependent upon the geological area of interest below the sea floor that the client is trying to get data from.

Streamer vessels also tow high energy sources, principally high pressure air gun arrays that operate at 2000psi that fire together to the create a tuned energy pulse into the seabed from which the reflected energy waves are recorded on the streamer receiver groups. Gun arrays are tuned, that is the frequency response of the resulting air bubble from the array when fired can be changed depending upon the combination and number of guns in a specific array and their individual volumes. Guns can be located individual on an array or can be combined to form clusters. Typically, source arrays have a volume of 2000 cubic inches to 7000 cubic inches, but this will depend upon the specific geology of the survey area.

Marine seismic surveys generate a significant quantity of data due to the size of modern towed streamer vessels and their towing capabilities.

A seismic vessel with 2 sources and towing a single streamer is known as a Narrow-Azimuth Towed Streamer (or NAZ or NATS). By the early 2000s, it was accepted that this type of acquisition was useful for initial exploration but inadequate for development and production, in which wells had to be accurately positioned. This led to the development of the Multi-Azimuth Towed Streamer (MAZ) which tried to break the limitations of the linear acquisition pattern of a NATS survey by acquiring a combination of NATS surveys at different azimuths (see diagram). This successfully delivered increased illumination of the subsurface and a better signal to noise ratio.

The seismic properties of salt poses an additional problem for marine seismic surveys, it attenuates seismic waves and its structure contains overhangs that are difficult to image. This led to another variation on the NATS survey type, the wide-azimuth towed streamer (or WAZ or WATS) and was first tested on the Mad Dog field in 2004. This type of survey involved 1 vessel solely towing a set of 8 streamers and 2 separate vessels towing seismic sources that were located at the start and end of the last receiver line (see diagram). This configuration was "tiled" 4 times, with the receiver vessel moving further away from the source vessels each time and eventually creating the effect of a survey with 4 times the number of streamers. The end result was a seismic dataset with a larger range of wider azimuths, delivering a breakthrough in seismic imaging. These are now the three common types of marine towed streamer seismic surveys.

Marine survey acquisition (Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS))
Marine survey acquisition is not just limited to seismic vessels; it is also possible to lay cables of geophones and hydrophones on the sea bed in a similar way to how cables are used in a land seismic survey, and use a separate source vessel. This method was originally developed out of operational necessity in order to enable seismic surveys to be conducted in areas with obstructions, such as production platforms, without having the compromise the resultant image quality. Ocean bottom cables (OBC) are also extensively used in other areas that a seismic vessel cannot be used, for example in shallow marine (water depth <300m) and transition zone environments, and can be deployed by remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) in deep water when repeatability is valued (see 4D, below). Conventional OBC surveys use dual-component receivers, combining a pressure sensor (hydrophone) and a vertical particle velocity sensor (vertical geophone), but more recent developments have expanded the method to use four-component sensors i.e. a hydrophone and three orthogonal geophones. Four-component sensors have the advantage of being able to also record shear waves, which do not travel through water but can still contain valuable information.

In addition to the operational advantages, OBC also has geophysical advantages over a conventional NATS survey that arise from the increased fold and wider range of azimuths associated with the survey geometry. However, much like a land survey, the wider azimuths and increased fold come at a cost and the ability for large-scale OBC surveys is severely limited.

In 2005, ocean bottom nodes (OBN) – an extension of the OBC method that uses battery-powered cableless receivers placed in deep water – was first trialled over the Atlantis Oil Field in a partnership between BP and Fairfield Geotechnologies. The placement of these nodes can be more flexible than the cables in OBC and they are easier to store and deploy due to their smaller size and lower weight.

Marine survey acquisition (Ocean Bottom Nodes (OBN))
The development of node technology came as a direct development from that of ocean bottom cable technology, i.e. that ability to place a hydrophone in direct contact with the seafloor to eliminate the seafloor to hydrophone sea water space that exists with towed streamer technology. The ocean bottom hydrophone concept itself is not new and has been used for many years in scientific research, but its rapid use as a data acquisition methodology in oil and gas exploration is relatively recent.

Nodes are self-contained 4-component units which include a hydrophone and three horizontal and vertical axis orientation sensors. Their physical dimensions vary depending on the design requirement and the manufacturer, but in general nodes tend to weigh in excess of 10 kilograms per unit to counteract buoyancy issues and to lessen the chance of movement on the seabed due to currents or tides.

Nodes are usable in areas where streamer vessels may not be able to safely enter and so for the safe navigation of node vessels and prior to the deployment of nodes, a bathymetry seabed survey is normally conducted of the survey area using side-scan technology to map the seabed topography in detail. This will identify any possible hazards that could impact the safe navigation of node and source vessels and also to identify any issues for node deployment including subsea obstructions, wrecks, oilfield infrastructure or sudden changes in water depths from underwater cliffs, canyons or other locations where nodes may not be stable or not make a good connection to the seabed.

Unlike OBC operations, a node vessel does not connect to a node line, whereas ocean bottom cables need to be physically attached to a recorder vessel to record data in real-time. With nodes, until the nodes are recovered and the data reaped from them (reaping is the industry term used to remove data from a recovered node when it is placed within a computerised system that copies the hard drive data from the node), there is an assumption that the data will be recorded as there is no real-time quality control element to a node's operating status as they are self-contained and not connected to any system once they are deployed. The technology is now well-established and very reliable and once a node and its battery system has passed all of its set up criteria there is a high degree of confidence that a node will work as specified. Technical downtime during node projects, i.e. individual node failures during deployment are usually in single figures as a percentage of the total nodes deployed.

Nodes are powered by either rechargeable internal Lithium-ion battery packs or replaceable non-rechargeable batteries - the design and the specification of the node will determine what battery technology is used. The battery life of a node unit is a critical consideration in the design of a node project; this is because once the battery runs out on a node, the data that has been collected is no longer stored on the solid-state hard drive and all data recorded since it was deployed on the sea floor will be lost. Therefore, a node with a 30-day battery life must be deployed, record data, be recovered and reaped within that 30-day period. This also ties in with the number of nodes that are to be deployed as this is closely related to battery life too. If too many nodes are deployed and the OBN crew's resources are not sufficient to recover these in time or external factors such as adverse weather limits recovery operations, batteries can expire and data can be lost. Disposable or non-rechargeable batteries can also create a significant waste management issue as batteries must be transported to and from an operation and the drained batteries disposed of by a licensed contractor ashore.

Another important consideration is that of synchronising the timing of individual node clock units with an internal clock drift correction. Any error in synchronising nodes properly before they are deployed can create unusable data. Because node acquisition is often multi-directional and from a number of sources simultaneously across a 24-hour time frame, for accurate data processing it is vital that all of the nodes are working to the same clock time.

The node type and specification will determine the node handling system design and the deployment and recovery modes. At present there are two mainstream approaches; node on a rope and ROV operations.

Node on a rope

This method requires the node to be attached to a steel wire or a high specification rope. Each node will be evenly spaced along the rope which will have special fittings to securely connect the node to the rope, for example every 50 metres depending upon the prospect design. This rope is then laid by a specialist node vessel using an node handling system, usually with dynamic positioning along a pre-defined node line. The nodes are ‘landed’ onto pre-plotted positions with an agreed and acceptable error radius, for example, a node must be placed within a 12.5 metre radius from the navigation pre-plot positions. They are often accompanied by pingers, small transponders that can be detected by an underwater acoustic positioning transducer which allows a pinging vessel or the node vessel itself to establish a definite sea floor position for each node on deployment. Depending on the contract, pingers can be located on every node or every third node, for example. Pinging and pinging equipment is the industry shorthand for the use of USBL or Ultra-short baseline acoustic positioning systems which are interfaced with vessel based differential GPS or Differential Global Positioning System navigation equipment.

Node lines are usually recovered by anchor or grapple hook dragging to recover the node line back on board the vessel. Handling systems on node vessels are used to store, deploy and recover nodes and their specific design will depend upon the node design. Small nodes can include a manual handling element whereas larger nodes are automatically handled by robotic systems for moving, storing, recharging and reaping nodes. Node vessels also use systems such as spoolers to manage rope lines and rope bins to store the many kilometres of ropes often carried onboard node on a rope vessels.

Node on a rope is normally used where there is shallow water within the prospect, for example less than 100 metres or a transition zone area close to a beach. For deeper water operations, a dynamic positioning vessel is used to ensure accurate deployment of nodes, but these larger vessels have a limitation as to how far into shore they can safely navigate into; the usual cutoff will be between 15 and 20 metres water depth depending on the vessel and its in-water equipment. Specialist shallow water boats can then be used for deploying and recovering nodes in water depths as shallow as 1 to 3 metres. These shallow water nodes can then be used to tie-in with geophones on the shore to provide a consistent seismic line transition from water to land.

There are some issues with this approach which make them vulnerable to damage or loss on a project and these all must be risk assessed and mitigated. Since nodes connected together on a rope sit on the sea floor unattended: they can be moved due to strong currents, the ropes can snag on seabed obstructions, they can be dragged by third party vessel anchors and caught by trawling fishing vessels. The threat of these types of potential hazards to this equipment should normally be identified and assessed during the project planning phase, especially in oilfield locations where well heads, pipelines and other subsea structures exist and where any contact with these must be avoided, normally achieved by adopting exclusion zones. Since it is possible for node lines to be moved after deployment, the issue of node position on recovery is critical and therefore positioning during both deployment and recovery is a standard navigation quality control check. In some case, node lines may need to be recovered and re-laid if the nodes have moved outside of the contract specifications.

ROV deployment

This method utilises ROV (remotely operated underwater vehicle) technology to handle and place nodes at their pre-plotted positions. This type of deployment and recovery method uses a basket full of nodes which is lowered into the water. An ROV will connect with the compatible node basket and remove individual nodes from a tray in a pre-defined order. Each node will be placed on its allocated pre-plot position. On recovery, the process works in reverse; the node to be recovered is picked up by the ROV, placed into the node basket tray until the basket is full when it is lifted back to the surface. The basket is recovered onto the node vessel, the nodes are removed from the basket and reaped.

ROV operations are normally used for deep water node projects, often in water depths to 3000 metres in the open ocean. However, there are some issues with ROV operations that need to be considered. ROV operations tend to be complex, especially deep water ROV operations and so the periodic maintenance demands may impact upon production. Umbilical's and other high technology spares for ROV's can be extremely expensive and repairs to ROVs which require onshore or third-party specialist support will stop a node project. Due to extreme water depths, the node deployment and recovery production rate will be much lower due to the time for node basket transit from surface to seafloor and there will almost certainly be weather or sea condition limitation for ROV operations in open ocean areas. The logistics for supporting operations far from shore can also be problematic for regular resupply, bunkering and crew change activities.

Time lapse acquisition (4D)
Time lapse or 4D surveys are 3D seismic surveys repeated after a period of time, the 4D term refers to the fourth dimension which in this case is time. Time lapse surveys are acquired in order to observe reservoir changes during production and identify areas where there are barriers to flow that may not be detectable in conventional seismic. Time lapse surveys consist of a baseline survey and a monitor or repeat survey, acquired after the field has been in production. Most of these surveys have been repeated NATS surveys as they are cheaper to acquire and most fields historically already had a NATS baseline survey. Some of these surveys are collected using ocean-bottom cables because the cables can be accurately placed in their previous location after being removed. Better repetition of the exact source and receiver location leads to improved repeatability and better signal to noise ratios. A number of 4D surveys have also been set up over fields in which ocean bottom cables have been purchased and permanently deployed. This method can be known as life of field seismic (LoFS) or permanent reservoir monitoring (PRM).

4D seismic surveys using towed streamer technology can be very challenging as the aim of a 4D survey it to repeat the original or baseline survey as accurately as possible. Weather, tides, current and even the time of year can have a significant impact upon how accurately such a survey can achieve that repeatability goal.

OBN has proven to be another very good way to accurately repeat a seismic acquisition. The world's first 4D survey using nodes was acquired over the Atlantis Oil Field in 2009, with the nodes being placed by a ROV in a water depth of 1300–2200 metres to within a few metres of where they were previously placed in 2005.

Seismic data processing
There are three main processes in seismic data processing: deconvolution, common-midpoint (CMP) stacking and migration.

Deconvolution is a process that tries to extract the reflectivity series of the Earth, under the assumption that a seismic trace is just the reflectivity series of the Earth convolved with distorting filters. This process improves temporal resolution by collapsing the seismic wavelet, but it is nonunique unless further information is available such as well logs, or further assumptions are made. Deconvolution operations can be cascaded, with each individual deconvolution designed to remove a particular type of distortion.

CMP stacking is a robust process that uses the fact that a particular location in the subsurface will have been sampled numerous times and at different offsets. This allows a geophysicist to construct a group of traces with a range of offsets that all sample the same subsurface location, known as a Common Midpoint Gather. The average amplitude is then calculated along a time sample, resulting in significantly lowering the random noise but also losing all valuable information about the relationship between seismic amplitude and offset. Less significant processes that are applied shortly before the CMP stack are Normal moveout correction and statics correction. Unlike marine seismic data, land seismic data has to be corrected for the elevation differences between the shot and receiver locations. This correction is in the form of a vertical time shift to a flat datum and is known as a statics correction, but will need further correcting later in the processing sequence because the velocity of the near-surface is not accurately known. This further correction is known as a residual statics correction.

Seismic migration is the process by which seismic events are geometrically re-located in either space or time to the location the event occurred in the subsurface rather than the location that it was recorded at the surface, thereby creating a more accurate image of the subsurface.

Seismic interpretation
The goal of seismic interpretation is to obtain a coherent geological story from the map of processed seismic reflections. At its most simple level, seismic interpretation involves tracing and correlating along continuous reflectors throughout the 2D or 3D dataset and using these as the basis for the geological interpretation. The aim of this is to produce structural maps that reflect the spatial variation in depth of certain geological layers. Using these maps hydrocarbon traps can be identified and models of the subsurface can be created that allow volume calculations to be made. However, a seismic dataset rarely gives a picture clear enough to do this. This is mainly because of the vertical and horizontal seismic resolution but often noise and processing difficulties also result in a lower quality picture. Due to this, there is always a degree of uncertainty in a seismic interpretation and a particular dataset could have more than one solution that fits the data. In such a case, more data will be needed to constrain the solution, for example in the form of further seismic acquisition, borehole logging or gravity and magnetic survey data. Similarly to the mentality of a seismic processor, a seismic interpreter is generally encouraged to be optimistic in order encourage further work rather than the abandonment of the survey area. Seismic interpretation is completed by both geologists and geophysicists, with most seismic interpreters having an understanding of both fields.

In hydrocarbon exploration, the features that the interpreter is particularly trying to delineate are the parts that make up a petroleum reservoir – the source rock, the reservoir rock, the seal and trap.

Seismic attribute analysis
Seismic attribute analysis involves extracting or deriving a quantity from seismic data that can be analysed in order to enhance information that might be more subtle in a traditional seismic image, leading to a better geological or geophysical interpretation of the data. Examples of attributes that can be analysed include mean amplitude, which can lead to the delineation of bright spots and dim spots, coherency and amplitude versus offset. Attributes that can show the presence of hydrocarbons are called direct hydrocarbon indicators.

Crustal studies
The use of reflection seismology in studies of tectonics and the Earth's crust was pioneered in the 1970s by groups such as the Consortium for Continental Reflection Profiling (COCORP), who inspired deep seismic exploration in other countries such as BIRPS in Great Britain and ECORS in France. The British Institutions Reflection Profiling Syndicate (BIRPS) was started up as a result of oil hydrocarbon exploration in the North Sea. It became clear that there was a lack of understanding of the tectonic processes that had formed the geological structures and sedimentary basins which were being explored. The effort produced some significant results and showed that it is possible to profile features such as thrust faults that penetrate through the crust to the upper mantle with marine seismic surveys.

Environmental impact
As with all human activities, seismic reflection surveys have some impact on the Earth's natural environment and both the hydrocarbon industry and environmental groups partake in research to investigate these effects.

Land
On land, conducting a seismic survey may require the building of roads, for transporting equipment and personnel, and vegetation may need to be cleared for the deployment of equipment. If the survey is in a relatively undeveloped area, significant habitat disturbance may occur and many governments require seismic companies to follow strict rules regarding destruction of the environment; for example, the use of dynamite as a seismic source may be disallowed. Seismic processing techniques allow for seismic lines to deviate around natural obstacles, or use pre-existing non-straight tracks and trails. With careful planning, this can greatly reduce the environmental impact of a land seismic survey. The more recent use of inertial navigation instruments for land survey instead of theodolites decreased the impact of seismic by allowing the winding of survey lines between trees.

The potential impact of any seismic survey on land needs to be assessed at the planning stage and managed effectively. Well regulated environments would generally require Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports prior to any work starting. Project planning also needs to recognise that once a project has completed, what impact if any, will be left behind. It is the contractors and clients responsibility to manage the remediation plan as per the contract and as per the laws where the project has been conducted.

Depending upon the size of a project, land seismic operations can have a significant local impact and a sizeable physical footprint, especially where storage facilities, camp utilities, waste management facilities (including black and grey water management), general and seismic vehicle parking areas, workshops and maintenance facilities and living accommodation are required. Contact with local people can cause potential disruptions to their normal lives such as increased noise, 24-hour operations and increased traffic and these have to be assessed and mitigated.

Archeological considerations are also important and project planning must accommodate legal, cultural and social requirements that will have to be considered. Specialist techniques can be used to assessed safe working distances from buildings and archeological structures to minimise their impact and prevent damage.

Marine
The main environmental concern for marine seismic surveys is the potential for noise associated with the high-energy seismic source to disturb or injure animal life, especially cetaceans such as whales, porpoises, and dolphins, as these mammals use sound as their primary method of communication with one another. High-level and long-duration sound can cause physical damage, such as hearing loss, whereas lower-level noise can cause temporary threshold shifts in hearing, obscuring sounds that are vital to marine life, or behavioural disturbance.

A study has shown that migrating humpback whales will leave a minimum 3 km gap between themselves and an operating seismic vessel, with resting humpback whale pods with cows exhibiting increased sensitivity and leaving an increased gap of 7–12 km. Conversely, the study found that male humpback whales were attracted to a single operating airgun as they were believed to have confused the low-frequency sound with that of whale breaching behaviour. In addition to whales, sea turtles, fish and squid all showed alarm and avoidance behaviour in the presence of an approaching seismic source. It is difficult to compare reports on the effects of seismic survey noise on marine life because methods and units are often inadequately documented.

The gray whale will avoid its regular migratory and feeding grounds by >30 km in areas of seismic testing. Similarly the breathing of gray whales was shown to be more rapid, indicating discomfort and panic in the whale. It is circumstantial evidence such as this that has led researchers to believe that avoidance and panic might be responsible for increased whale beachings although research is ongoing into these questions.

Even so, airguns are  shut  down  only when cetaceans are seen at very close range, usually under 1 km

Offering another point of view, a joint paper from the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC) and the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) argue that the noise created by marine seismic surveys is comparable to natural sources of seismic noise, stating:

The UK government organisation, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (more commonly known as JNCC) is "...the public body that advises the UK Government and devolved administrations on UK-wide and international nature conservation." has had a long term vested interest in the impact of geophysical or seismic surveys on the marine environment for many years. Even back in the 1990s, it was understood at a government level that the impact of the sound energy produced by seismic surveys needed to be investigated and monitored. JNCC guidelines have been and continue to be one of the references used internationally as a possible baseline standard for surveys in seismic contracts world-wide, such as the 'JNCC guidelines for minimising the risk of injury to marine mammals from geophysical surveys (seismic survey guidelines)', 2017.

A complicating factor in the discussion of seismic sound energy as a disruptive factor to marine mammals is that of the size and scale of seismic surveys as they are conducted into the 21st century. Historically, seismic surveys tended to have a duration of weeks or months and to be localised, but with OBN technology, surveys can cover thousands of square kilometres of ocean and can continue for years, all of the time putting sound energy into the ocean 24 hours a day from multiple energy sources. One current example of this is the 85,000 square kilometre mega seismic survey contract signed by the Abu Dhabi national oil company ADNOC in 2018 with an estimated duration into 2024 across a range of deep-water areas, coastal areas, islands and shallow water locations. It may be very difficult to assess the long-term impact of these huge operations on marine life.

In 2017, IOGP recommended that, to avoid disturbance whilst surveying:

 * Protective measures are employed to address site-specific environmental conditions of each operation to ensure that sound exposure and vessel traffic do not harm marine mammals.
 * Surveys planned to avoid known sensitive areas and time periods, such as breeding and feeding areas.
 * Exclusion zones are typically established around the seismic source to further protect marine fauna from any potentially detrimental effects of sound. The exclusion zone is typically a circle with a radius of at least 500 meters around the sound source.
 * Trained observers and listening devices are used to visually and acoustically monitor that zone for marine mammals and other protected species before any sound-producing operations begin. These observers help ensure adherence to the protective practices during operations and their detailed reports provide information on the biodiversity of the survey area to the local governments.
 * Sound production typically begins with a “soft-start” or “ramp-up” that involves a gradual increase of the sound level from the air gun source from a very low level to full operational levels at the beginning of the seismic lines – usually over 20 to 40 minutes. This soft-start procedure is intended to allow time for any animal that may be close to the sound source to move away as the sound grows louder.

As second factor is the regulatory environment where the seismic survey is taking place. In highly regulated locations such as the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, the legal requirements will be clearly stated at the contract level and both contractor and client will comply with the regulations as the consequences of non-compliance can be severe such as substantial fines or withdrawal of permits for exploration blocks. However, there are some countries which have a varied and rich marine biome but where the environmental laws are weak and where a regulator is ineffective or even non-existent. This situation, where the regulatory framework is not robust can severely compromise any attempts at protecting marine environments: this is frequently found where state-owned oil and gas companies are dominant in a country and where the regulator is also a state-owned and operated entity and therefore it is not considered to be truly independent.

title: Reflection seismology


text:
Sisillius II

Sisillius II (Welsh: Seisyllt map Kyhylyn) was a legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He came to power in 373BC.

Legendary account
Sillius II was the son of King Guithelin and Queen Marcia, succeeded by his son Kinarius. Since his father, Guithelin, died when Sisillius was just seven years of age, his mother, Queen Marcia ruled Britain for about five years in his stead as Queen regent. Upon her death, c. 358 BC, Sisillius came to the throne, ruling for the next six years.

His reign was followed by those of his sons Kinarius and Danius.

title: Sisillius II


text:
Kinarius

Kinarius was a fictitious legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He came to power in 367BC. He was son of Sisillius II and succeeded by his brother, Danius.

title: Kinarius


text:
User talk:Thyla

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Good work on the Great Dane Article! You might like to start by reading the tutorial and introducing yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask at the help desk or on my talk page. Two useful tips are that you can sign your name using four tildes ( ~ ) and you can preview your changes before you save using the show preview button. You can regularly find new tips on the Community Portal. I look forward to reading your great articles and I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. :) sannse (talk) 06:28, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Thyla