Describing what the Biblical Flood would be like.

Faith on several occasions has asserted that no one can know what the Biblical Flood would have been like.That seems to be a really silly assertion once again totally refuted by all the evidence, reason and reality; so I think it might be worthwhile to explore both why it is possible and what the evidence of such an event MUST be.First, the two stories give us beginning criteria; rain for 40 days and 40 nights.Water from the rainfall and from unspecified "fountains of the deep".All the water recedes over about 12 months until fertile land is again exposed.So based on those assertions from the stories and considering reality, physics and geography we can make a few basic conclusions.The water that fell as rain had to come from water already in the seas so there would be a net rise of water level from rain of zero.The water from the "fountain of the deep" would result in two effects; local land subsidence at the source of the fountains extending across the area above that aquifer; and local flooding around the fountains.Water taken from aquifers would have a long recharge time and so the water from the "fountains of the deep" would remain as surface water for longer than the time between the supposed flood and today.The land that subsided over the source aquifers would still be at the level of the initial subsidence and most likely show up today as lakes immediately over aquifers and that that did not exist over 4000-4500 years ago.While loose materials would be washed down hill to be deposited at lower levels there would be almost no additional noticeable wear to any lithified rocks. The floods total duration is simply too short to cause any appreciable erosion to anything but loose materials and extremely soft surfaces.What would get deposited during the recessional event would be a jumbled mass of mostly unsorted materials with the only identifiable sorting being most dense items on the bottom graded to least dense items at the top.There should be a uniform and universal interruption of existing cultures, biology, environment and ecology that shows a radiating pattern of return beginning somewhere near where the Ark of the stories was supposed to have ended up.What the above are based on?We can look at the current real evidence found in the world today to make conclusions based on current processes as well as geology, physics, chemistry, hydraulics, current annual events like monsoons and major annual flooding and land subsidence as we pump waters out of aquifers and wear to lithified materials seen in falls and from rainfall.Those processes; getting water into the air to fall as rain, measuring erosion to lithified surfaces as found all over the world, measuring subsidence, measuring aquifer refill data, looking at the result of floods and tsunamis and annual inundations give us baseline studies that can then be used to make predictions given the conditions laid out in the stories.Are there other things based on reality, physics, chemistry, geology and paleontology that should be seen?Are there other things that must be seen if the Biblical Flood really happened?AbE: likely Geology and the Great Flood.Edited by jar, : suggest proper forum

Thread copied here from the Describing what the Biblical Flood would be like. thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

There is yet more conclusions we can make based on the stories themselves.The stories say that the Ark came to rest among mountains. It also says (at least one of the stories) that one of the indications was a a freshly picked olive leaf.So what does that tell us?Olive trees have a fairly shallow root system but one that extends far beyond the canopy line, often as much a four times the diameter of the canopy drip line.They require a soil base, not lithified rock.That means that the recessionary phase of the flood did not strip away the soil even in mountainous areas and that the flood duration at that location did not last long enough to kill the tree.AbE:We can say a little bit more based on the story itself. Olive trees cannot stand waterlogged soil and so even if the area around the tree received lots of rain the base did not remain underwater for any extended period and the excess water from the rain or "fountains of the deep" drained away rapidly; certainly for far less than a full year.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin show ----> soEdited by jar, : see AbE:Edited by jar, : appalin spallin requite ----> require fumble finger and reading what I know I wrote instead of what I actually wrote.

JR Baumgardner and DW Barnette have shown that the Flood could easily erode the existing bed rock to create the sediment needed to produce the observed post-Flood strata. The Coriolis effect and rotating earth cause ocean currents throughout the Flooded world. The currents accelerate over the flooded continent to such high rates that rock is eroded. Depending on the scenario, the currents range from 40 to 80 m/s. Since rock is eroded and the resulting sediment transported, the Flood actually happened. http://static.icr.org/...ver-the-Continents-during-Flood.pdf The fact that no sediment could be deposited on the continents due to the 40 to 80 m/s velocities is not discussed. Note: Sand deposits in water velocities around 0.1 m/s (IIRC) and silt/mud even slower.So according to their study, the Flood would erode the continents. If the velocities are too high to deposit the sediment on the continents, then it must all be in the ocean basins.So the obvious evidence of the Flood is the bare rock of the continents and sand, etc. deposits far out into the oceans.

While the utterly dishonest, delusional or willfully ignorant might be swayed by such nonsense once again reality intervenes and says Bumgardner etal are full of shit.Today we can see examples of water flow within those speeds and so can also see just what little it does. Here is a partial list of rivers with a discharge flow of over 1000 cubic meters of flow per second. Some of these rivers have even been studied by Scientists.AbE: Plus the Bible says they are full of shit too. See Message 3.Edited by jar, : see AbE:

Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

1000 cubic meters per second could be a LOT more than 80/sec of velocity or it could be a LOT less. They aren't the same thing.Let's say the river is 100m wide and an average of 10 meters deep. The 2,000 cubic meters per second (the Rhine) give a velocity of 2 m/sec. from: Water Resources - Science | U.S. Geological SurveyThe next question is can water flow at 10's of meters per second.

You are correct. Mea Culpa. Yet according to the story the Olive Tree still stood.AbE: I did a little more research and it seems the actual terminal velocity of a big rain drop is about 9 m/s but if it were falling in a vacuum it could reach velocities over 200 m/s.AbE-2:Also checks and water cutting tools can deliver water at over 1km/s so it seems water can be made to move very fast over short distances when under very high pressure.Also, from an article on the Coriolis force:

quote:

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In 1908, the Austrian physicist Ottokar Tumlirz described careful and effective experiments that demonstrated the effect of the rotation of the Earth on the outflow of water through a central aperture.[43] The subject was later popularized in a famous 1962 article in the journal Nature, which described an experiment in which all other forces to the system were removed by filling a 6 ft (1.8 m) tank with 300 U.S. gal (1,100 L) of water and allowing it to settle for 24 hours (to allow any movement due to filling the tank to die away), in a room where the temperature had stabilized. The drain plug was then very slowly removed, and tiny pieces of floating wood were used to observe rotation. During the first 12 to 15 minutes, no rotation was observed. Then, a vortex appeared and consistently began to rotate in an anticlockwise direction (the experiment was performed in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Northern Hemisphere). This was repeated and the results averaged to make sure the effect was real. The report noted that the vortex rotated, "about 30,000 times faster than the effective rotation of the Earth in 42 North (the experiment's location)". This shows that the small initial rotation due to the Earth is amplified by gravitational draining and conservation of angular momentum to become a rapid vortex and may be observed under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

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So factors other than the Coriolis force would have far greater effect.Yet the Olive Tree still stood.AbE-3: The Gulf stream flow is about 2.5 m/s.The Antarctic Polar Current flows at about half the speed of the Gulf StreamEdited by jar, : see AbE:Edited by jar, : see AbE-2:Edited by jar, : see AbE-3:

Over 200 m/s? Ha, try letting it fall from the height of the moon.The paper (which I only glanced at) suggest Coriolis forces could spin up the water I guess. But I have a suspicion there is a limit to that too.

Life before the Flood, including olive trees, would have had far more endurance than anything that has grown since then.I remember something about paleosols that indicated that they had developed in a tropical climate under highly advantageous conditions, even something about their being unlike today's soils in their superior properties. Don't have the patience to look further than I just did, so maybe someone can correct me if this is wrong.Seems to me such qualities in paleosols would indicate greater fertility and vitality in the pre-Flood world in general, and I would assume the same for anything growing then, such as an olive tree high in the mountains. In other words it may not be right to impute the weaknesses of today's olive trees to antediluvian olive trees.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A paleosol or fossil soil is just a soil that formed on a landscape sometime in the past. I see them all the time doing archaeology.One example: beneath our local archaeological sites there is often a layer that is kind of golden, showing exposure and oxidation at some time in the past. That is just one type of paleosol.Also, we generally refer to cultural layers within our sites as anthrosols, indicating there is human influence in their creation.

OK, thanks, but at an archaeological site aren't you seeing fairly recent layers that would have been built on top of the geo column? That is, assuming the Flood of course, the paleosols would all be post-Flood where you are working.abe Or, so as not to stretch your credulity too much, in very recent time as compared to the time periods assigned in the Geo Timescale?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Again Faith, that is simply another unsupported assertion refuted by ALL of the evidence that has been found. Again Faith, this thread is dealing with reality and in fact the Olive in question would have to be both pre and post flood.If the story found in the Bible were true it would simply be yet more proof there was never a world-wide flood.The Bible is replete with such wonderful examples that proof the Bible is wrong.AbE:In addition, the issue is not whether or not the soils before the imaginary flood were fertile, it is that the flood did not knock down the olive tree or cover the root system in water for more than a few days or harm the tree in anyway.Physics is still physics. Biology is still biology. Chemistry is still chemistry. Mechanics is still mechanics. The Olive tree would have been the same Olive tree both before and after the flood. The soil the tree is growing in is still the soil that was there before the alleged flood.Edited by jar, : see AbE:

The research by the Institute for Creation Research shows that no soil would be left on the continents by the Flood. Any antediluvian trees would have been ripped from the ground and left to float for a year. When the Flood receded, no soil would have been left on the continents for anything to sprout in.

Please don't suggest that ICR actually does any research; that is just too big a guffaw to stomach. And as usual, the Bible says that ICR is full of shit.