Troublesome Topic: PHASE 2 THE FIRST THREE MEGASEQUENCES LOOKED MUCH THE SAME
Lesson 8 of 20The earthquakes that opened the fissures which gave us our current tectonic plates were the first salvo of the Pre-Sauk Megasequence.
The Pre- Sauk Megasequence included more than just the initial shock that broke apart the ocean floors, for there is too much sediment deposited by it to be just the first few minutes. But we cannot know how long it lasted. The primary thing it did was break the ocean floor apart.
What I call Phase 2 included the latter part of the Pre-Sauk, all of the Sauk, and Tippecanoe Megasequences, because they were very similar. I think all of them took place within the first three weeks of the beginning of the flood event. I call it a “flood event” rather than just a flood because it involved much more than just water.
Although the chemical and physical signatures in the rock layers show differences that are significant enough for certain layers to be designated as different Megasequences, the people on land during this early part of the flood would not have noticed a difference between any of the three Megasequence I just mentioned. I have lumped these three Megasequences together because I am writing primarily from the perspective of the humans that were not on the ark.
During these three Megasequences, the level of the oceans was indeed rising, but it was so slow that no one noticed.
However, we can assume that local flooding probably started early in the flood event in areas that were prone to such flooding. They would have been an inconvenience, but by themselves they were not the kind of global flood that Noah had warned the people about.
LANDSLIDES
With the pounding rain, it would not have taken long before the soil would have become fully saturated making the ground soft and soggy. Add to that the shaking of the ground, and wherever there were hills, landslides continued to claim their unsuspecting victims; and making transportation impossible.
Foundations of buildings that were not damaged by the quakes (those furthest inland, for instance) were slowly washed away by the constantly moving water. The problems created by the saturated soil continued to get worse because the rain did not abet for forty days and nights.
SUBDUCTION VS. RUNAWAY SUBDUCTION
You may recall that subduction means when the edge of one continent-sized section of stone, called a tectonic plate, sinks into the magma underneath it and slides underneath the adjoining plate. Sometimes the pressure causes the plates to move sideways against each other instead of down. Since the plates are jammed against each other with great pressure, and since they have very rough edges, any movement of a tectonic plate involves considerable friction, so that even a “small” jerk of a tectonic plate will set off powerful earthquakes. In our day the subduction process usually happens one jerk at a time, separated by years between the movements. That is one reason evolutionists think that a full subduction process requires millions of years.
Runaway subduction means a rapid movement characterized by rough scraping of these massive plates against each other in a continual manner until one plate is completely submerged. Hot magma rises through the gaps between the plates as one is submerged, and it becomes new ocean floor. If a long enough section of ocean floor is hot and soft, this process allows for the movement of continents. Runaway subduction naturally causes a non-stop series of violent earthquakes. Creationists believe that runaway subduction occurred during the flood event; evolutionists don’t believe that runaway subduction has ever occurred.
It appears that, right after the opening of the fissures in the ocean floor, runaway subduction began on the ocean floor near Western USA and northern Canada, and between North America and West Africa. This began to push North America away from Africa. The subduction in the Pacific gave the continent of North America somewhere to go as it moved away from Africa.
Timothy Clarey explains why, once it got started, the runaway subduction of necessity, had to consume the entire ocean floor and why it will never happen again. Before the flood, the basaltic oceanic crust was more dense than the ocean crust we have today, and it had a different chemical makeup. “It was the density contrast of the heavy, cold, original ocean crust (called the lithosphere) that allowed the runaway subduction process to begin and continue. The density difference essentially served as the fuel… There was no geophysical means or reason to stop the rapid plate motion until the density contrast was fully alleviated. At that moment, the newer, more buoyant lithosphere ceased subducting, bringing plate motion to a virtual standstill… A second move [of continents is] rendered impossible” (Carved in Stone, p, 159).
This conclusively demolishes the idea of a pre-Pangaea continent that some have called Rodinia (there are many divergent ideas of its configuration, this is one of many). There was enough density contrast to fuel one movement of continents and the creation of an entirely new ocean floor, but that first move would have used up all the “fuel”, leaving none for a second moving of the continents. If the earth had started as Rodinia, we would be stuck in Pangaea; a second recreation of the ocean floor would have been impossible, as was a second moving of the continents. That indicates that the continents started as one of the iterations of Pangaea.
TSUNAMIS
We have been given the wrong mental image of tsunamis because the only ones we hear about are the big, dangerous, deadly ones. In reality, tsunamis come in various sizes, and they can be a surge of water, or a rapid rise in water level, not just a wave.
I am aware of two ways by which we know that the tsunamis of the early part of the flood were not very large or dangerous.
First, the lowest layers of rock only contain fossils of shallow sea creatures.
Secondly, most tsunamis generated by earthquakes are quite small. We know this due to a study made of all the recorded tsunamis around the world in the 121-year period from 1900 to 2020. During that time, 80% of the tsunamis recorded were caused by earthquakes; the other 20% were caused by large amounts of material falling into the sea with great force, e.g. landslides, the calving of glaciers, or the collapse of a volcano’s flank during an eruption. This study revealed that, the median Maximum Water Height (MWH) of earthquake tsunamis is just 16 inches. This means that the smallest recorded tsunami of this type was very, very small. By contrast, the median MWH for landslide tsunamis is 3.6 m higher than for earthquake tsunamis; the median MWH for volcano tsunamis is 2.1 m higher than for earthquake tsunamis. (from link.springer.com). In general, fatalities are caused by tsunamis with MWHs of more than 1 m, 39 inches. Thus even today, earthquake tsunamis do not usually cause human deaths.
According to livescience.com, an earthquake must be a 7.0 or higher on the Richter scale to be able to generate a tsunami https://www.livescience.com/8824-earthquakes-tsunamis.html. Therefore, it is not a matter of these smaller waves being caused by small earthquakes ranging in the 5s, 4s or 3s.
![](https://www.toughbiblestuff.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00024-022-03057-1 (fig.4).
As the left-hand section of this chart shows, the vast majority of earthquake tsunamis have been small waves or surges that did not cause any deaths. Thus, most of the tsunamis happening after the first few hours of the flood event were not even noticed by the population, especially since those who had survived were not concerned about what was happening on the beach. There have been some earthquake tsunamis that were large and powerful and have caused deaths. The one standing by itself at over 200,000 deaths was the largest earthquake tsunami at almost 50 meters and it hit a densely populated area.
SUMMARY OF WHAT THE HUMAN SURVIVORS EXPERIENCED SO FAR
For most people around the world, there was one strong shock at the very beginning, accompanied by volcanoes, lightning, explosions, hurricane conditions, meteorites, possibly hail and tornadoes. It is my opinion that only about 25% of the world’s population survived the opening salvo of the flood event. Then, for the next three weeks or so, (we can’t be sure), most people experienced all the above, plus landslides, but minus continued earthquakes. However, those close to where some continents began to separate experienced continual earthquakes as well as all the other sources of danger already mentioned. For everyone on earth it was continual terror and misery, but those closest to those places where runaway subduction was occurring got hit the hardest during those early days of the flood event. But some of them survived to live another day.
We know from Genesis that the rain did not let up at all during the first 40 days, but the rock layers tell us that the volcanoes and earthquakes paused briefly in many areas. This pause provided the opportunity for a major change that came about in the next Megasequence.
The next lesson in this study is PHASE 3 THE WATER LEVEL BEGAN TO RISE FASTER