For those who believe that Noah's flood is not global, how do they reconcile it with universal judgment?

Several Christian Bible scholars / theologians, for various reasons, want to interpret the flood in Genesis 6-9 as "not global" (see [various interpretation](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/56054/10672)) . Those who believe there was a **historical but regional/local** flood would also supply various ways to reconcile what the text is saying and the *fact* of that flood, to come up with the **theological message** that remains true for us today. That is, the telling in Genesis 6-9 was meant to be primarily a *theological* story of God's covenant with humanity *regardless* whether the description it provides (as details in the story) was scientifically and historically accurate. *One* of those ways (i.e. *NOT* the only way, see Note below) is to say that the author was using the Ancient Near East *hyperbole* literary technique we see in common use in contemporaneous non-Biblical texts. Examples of 21st century support for this way of interpretation: - John Walton and Tremper Longman in their book [The Lost World of the Flood](https://www.ivpress.com/the-lost-world-of-the-flood) . A summary can be read through [this interview with them about the book](https://biologos.org/articles/the-genesis-flood-through-ancient-eyes-an-interview-with-john-walton-and-tremper-longman) . - Gavin Ortlund in his 2015 blog article [Why a Local Flood?](https://truthunites.org/2015/01/03/why-a-local-flood/) and his recent 2024 *TruthUnites* video episode [Was Noah's Flood Local?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq5tUg4SWzs) But in at least 2 places there is reference to *everyone except 8* who are destroyed: Gen 6:17: > "Understand that I am bringing a flood—floodwaters on the earth **to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it**. Everything on earth will perish. and in 2 Peter 2:5: > ... and if he didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected **Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others**, when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly; ... But with the flood being *regional* rather than *global*: - It seems God was *not* telling the truth in Gen 6:17. - The implication that only 8 people were alive in 2 Peter 2:5 would not be true either. - Consequently, we may have a problem with Biblical inerrancy. - The typology that **salvation is *only* for those in Noah's Ark** (as place of safety) may not work either. **How do proponents of Noah's flood as *historical but not-global* where not everyone died, solve the above problem?** ---- **Note**: (thanks to @TheodoreReinJedlicka) 1. Not all local flood proponents may agree with scientific consensus, and still hold to a local flood. 1. Several local flood proponents may not believe the account to be hyperbolic. 1. There is an ontological difference between saying that the flood is a hyperbolic story, versus saying that the story is told using hyperbolic language typical of the ancient world to communicate both historical and spiritual truth. Two very different positions – I don't want scientific consensus and the various ways to tell about the historical local flood to cloud this question. What matters is simply this: not every human died in that historical local flood. A related point is that there is a high probability that the historical local flood didn't affect several pre-historic human settlements far away from the Mediterranean, such as the aboriginal Australia or ancient China. If we find ***ungodly* people in those areas were not killed by God's action in that flood**, would we have a problem? I understand that an answer can be limited to hermeneutical analysis, but when integrating that interpretation to *theology* (this is a question to C.SE rather than to BH.SE) we want to at least address this anthropology / archaeology angle.