“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”  – Matthew 24: 37-39

Did you know there were 9 generations between Adam and Noah?
People who lived for 800-1000 years.

I used to see the depictions in Sunday school like we all have, and old bearded man, a rickety wooden boat being filled with animals two by two (like how’d he keep the lions from eating all the cows?), and a rural, farmer setting with bronze age tools, etc.

Let’s say God made math and logic for a reason:
(Please check my math)
Adam and Eve were perfect when they were created.
Women can produce 400 or more eggs in their lifetime. That is the imperfect, degenerated, modern stock, not the ones a couple of generations from the beginning perfection.
Let’s say 1 couple makes 100 kids (after Seth, Eve probably made plenty of sons and daughters, not to mention Cain as he was only banished, not killed). That’s 50 couples give or take.
First generation, if every couple had 100 kids: 5000
Second generation: 250,000
Third generation: 12,500,000 the city of LA
Fourth generation: 625,000,000 that’s Russia and the USA
Fifth generation: 32 billion
Sixth generation: 1.5 trillion
Seventh generation: close to 80 trillion people born.
Eighth generation: 3 quadrillion people born.

Yikes.

Of course, this is only counting people born, and not how many died, or if people didn’t just stop at 20 or 30 kids each. But the population of the earth before the flood had to have been in the BILLIONS at least.

Consider that all of those people are not like the people you know now. They were only a few generations away from being perfect like Adam was.
Think of the most intelligent, healthy, vigorous and motivated people you know.
Now think that those people you just visualized would be pitiful, unhealthy, diseased and very, very stupid compared to pre-flood humanity. All with the same language, lineage and motivations, and all tainted and deceived by a Satan that was visible, tangible and powerful.
All except for a very few that is.

I am sure that by the fourth generation, they had a “great” civilization, and by Noah’s time they probably surpassed us in science and industry. We may have already found their dead decaying remains on the Moon and Mars, who knows?

Noah was not some old bronze age farmer that built a boat.

That story was written by a bronze age prophet with no point of reference to the heavily armored, high-tech vessel built to survive the complete and utter destruction of all living things and the total reshaping of the earth that was “The Flood”. My guess is that Noah was a scientist/industrialist and the “two by two” were embryos gestating in test tubes and cryogenics for several years while he worked to heal the earth, plant food and get things started again.  But that is just my guess.

Genesis was written to record the fact that God made the earth and all life, that He already destroyed it once, so now He is giving the children of Isaac the chance to do it right. The rest of the “Old Testament” is the story of how miserable a failure that was, but with the hope of redemption that came from Jesus.

What’s the point of this? It is just speculation, isn’t it?
Noah could well have been a farmer who built a wooden boat and shoved a buncha stinking animals into it (with no room for enough food for 40 hours let alone 40 days), and God could have used His power to keep them alive and safe.
But I know, through the Word and through history that God seldom uses His direct power over the earth. He prefers for us to listen, believe and act on that belief. To work, labor and learn His will. We are His children, in that very real sense, and the earth and universe are His classroom/nursery/apprenticeship for us to learn in.
…and the fact that God had no problem with wiping out a greater and vaster, more prolific and powerful civilization than our own, for merely being as evil as we are now.
There were probably many more people that followed God than just Noah and his family, but they didn’t make it to the boat. Think about that and be ready, eh?