On the flood thing:

A great web site, complete with lots of photos, graphics, and links to related pages HERE.

I've driven through this area a number of times, and it's pretty awe-inspiring—if a bit bleak.

This is referred to, rather unappealingly, as the "Eastern Washington Scablands."

This happened no later than about 12,000 years ago, with the receding of the ice sheet and the melt and collapse of an ice dam, which released a huge flood over the area. This may have happened several times and in several locations.

Northwest Native American tribes have some really dandy Flood Legends.

Note the date. No later than 12,000 years ago, and as far as topsoil and such is concerned, it has only recovered this much in twelve millennia. If Noah's flood had happened within the time frame the Young Earth Creationists insist upon—no more than 6,000 years ago—and was world-wide, the whole earth would look no better than this!. And there would not be enough arable land to sustain a few small tribes, let alone 7 billion people!

Don Firth

P. S.   None of this, the idea that the Bible is a book of folk legend, myth, and metaphor rather than a rigorous book of literal history, and that scientific research into matters of cosmology and evolution provides a far more reasonable and believable explanation of the Way Things Are than the myths and folk tales espoused by Creationists and Fundamentalists, in no way contradicts or interferes with my religious beliefs and my sense of morality (good and evil), which I got more from Greek philosophers than I did from any religious teaching.

And I reject the idea that Plato got it from Jesus, because Jesus was born over 300 years after Plato. And no, the idea that Christianity is "retroactive," I'm sorry, is just plain silly.