Is there a safe but weird distance from black hole merger?

I wish to create a world such that it can support the following plot point: the world experiences gravitational waves that are directly noticeable to the human population (i.e. they can feel or see the effects themselves without instruments) without being so strong that everything gets spaghettified.

The most obvious way to arrange this seems to be to have a pair of black holes undergo a merger at a suitable distance: not so close that everything gets ripped apart, and not so far away that the gravitational waves have become un-noticeably weak.

My question has 2 parts but they are directly related so it wouldn't make sense to split this into 2 separate questions:

(a) assuming a pair of 30 solar mass black holes as detected the other year by LIGO, what distance from the event would provide gravitational waves of the weird but not deadly strength that I need; and

(b) at such a distance from the event, would you be safe from other consequences of the black hole merger, or would something else such as the intensity of high energy particle emissions kill you anyway?

I'm open to any kind of habitat for my world, it could be a planet or a deep space habitat or generation ship or whatever. If the gravitational waves would rule out particular kinds of world then I'd be keen to hear why (e.g. maybe waves strong enough to be noticeable to humans would shatter a planet but a space habitat might be small enough to survive). In my story I may make limited use of unobtainium for interstellar travel, but I want the physical effects of the black hole to be as hard science as possible.

If a black hole merger is out of the question as too dangerous, I'd be happy to receive reality-check level suggestions of alternative events that could safely create the kind of noticeable gravitational wave I want.

posted over 5 years ago

SO failed us all... Bye...‭

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