Was the flood in the Bible universial or local?

Answer 1

Noah's Flood was a universal flood, to destroy all the earth and everything in it- God was not pleased with the way the people were acting- except Noah and his family- so he spared them of death.

Answer 2

According the the Book of Genesis, Noah's Flood had to be universal, because God wanted to kill everyone except Noah and his family. On the other hand, according to the physical evidence there clearly was no world-wide flood.
Ian Wilson (Before the Flood) provides quite compelling evidence that the biblical Flood story might have been a folk memory of the local inundation of the Black Sea around 5400 BCE.