Water, water, everywhere'ish

Now I know there's been a lot of rain in the UK lately and I know us Brits are obsessed with the weather but I couldn't help wonder the other day just how much water there was on this planet (and why does most of it seem to end up in our office car park!). According to some creationist loony tunes like Kent Hovind there's enough water to cover the planet several miles deep, there has to be otherwise the Noah's ark story can't be true. Now I know you're thinking that surely the flood myth is just that, i.e. a myth and that anyone who thinks it's really true must be some weird fringe Christian, a bit of a nutter. I thought that too, until I learned of several teachers in my kid's school who actually tell (assertively) the children that Noah's flood is FACT, seemingly these Christians think that following a deity who would execute millions of children because their parents didn't grovel to him sufficiently is an example of morality worthy of passing onto children; I beg to differ. Anyway, I digress let's get back to the water question.

Some bright spark scientist has actually worked out an accurate answer to this question, the picture above shows what would happen if you took all the water in the oceans, seas, rivers, atmosphere and ice caps compact it into a single ball and plonk it onto the surface of the planet. There seems to be a lot less than you'd think, the ball would be roughly 860 miles in diameter, more of a big drop than a flood. I guess it's normally spread quite thin (relatively), certainly not enough to start worrying about accumulating animals two by two.