According to the young-earth creationist (YEC) paradigm, the narratives recorded in the biblical book of Genesis are accurate historical records of actual events. Within that paradigm, the Flood of Noah is considered to have happened as described in chapters 7 and 8 of Genesis. According to the narrative, the rain of the Flood began in the second month of Noah’s 600th year. The rain lasted 40 days, at the end of which the water level was more than 6 meters above the height of the highest mountains. All humans and non-aquatic animals perished, except those that were on the Ark with Noah. The earth remained flooded for 150 days, but by the end of that period the waters had receded enough for the Ark to rest on the “mountains of Ararat” (not a single Mt Ararat, as is commonly but incorrectly assumed). About two and a half months after the Ark came to rest, the waters had receded enough to expose the tops of mountains. By the end of the second month of Noah’s 601st year, “the earth was completely dry” (Genesis 8:14, New International Version). The account therefore describes a flooding event in which water rose for 40 days and receded for the rest of a single year, during which recession the planet was completely submerged for 150 days.

In 1961 Whitcomb and Morris published The Genesis Flood. The authors presented the hypothesis that the Flood was responsible for the deposition of all Phanerozoic sedimentary strata stratigraphically below the Quaternary. They also questioned the validity of the stratigraphic principles upon which the geologic column—the sequence of time divisions to which geological deposits are assigned—is based (see Figure 1). Their publication was not the first to espouse these views but its popularity precipitated a deluge of Flood-related research by young-earth creationists in an attempt to find support for the book’s conclusions. Ironically, that outpouring of research has ultimately led to the falsification of most of the book’s geological interpretations.