Ok, lemme throw in a couple things;
1. I doubt a pole shift will occur between 3:00 and 3:15 on a sunny afternoon. If I read aright, one of our previous ones took close to 1,000 years. Remember we're talking "quick" in geological time, not man, or even dog years.
And it should be noted that the polarity of the magnetic field has abruptly "flipped" or changed direction many times over the billions of years the earth has been here.
2. All of the talk of tidal waves, etc also assume a linkage between earth's magnetic pole and it's rotation. This also, if I read aright about 2 wks ago, "t'ain't necessarily so".
Factor in these two ideas and it could turn out to be a real ho-hum for us humans. The migrating birds ain'ta gonna like it one bit, though.
In the end, like nuclear warfare, the only real safe place is "anywhere you can look up and say,
What in the hell was that?"
Cheers,
Fred