Mayan Long Count, Duck and Cover vs. Four Horsepower Apocalypse

I have dealt with the end of the world before. In the first of a series of essays on fabulous beasts I described those singular events encountered on Patmos Island. They were noted by St. John,  a keen observer, and contributed to the overall Apocalyptic picture in the Book Of Revelations:

This painting, by Victor Vasnetsov, is typical. It shows four riders, two of whom don't look at all well, determined to lay waste to the world. They are listed as Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death, and are intended as allegorical forms, manageable forces, which makes sense. Even more sense is made if the student of prophesy consolidates them as avoidable, correctable evils humanity inflicts upon itself in the privatization of greed, conquest and insensitivity.

An increasingly industrialized populace realized four horsepower will run a small rototiller but falls far short of plowing a planet.

On the other hand, we have this:

It is a central detail of the Mayan Calendar. It is from Mesoamerica, a region extending from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Like all ancient Mesoamerican calendars it relies upon pictographic guidelines, arithmetic and is really really heavy. Here is the Aztec version:

It is called, Piedra del Sol, Stone of The Sun. When somebody slams the kitchen door and makes them fall off the wall, ancient Mesoamerican calendars can level a house. Under increasing fear of the remote possibility of everybody slamming their kitchen doors at once, thereby destroying civilization, banks and other businesses down there quit handing them out free to customers every year.

There is an apocalyptic community, surrounding pre-Columbian Mesoamerican calendars, currently enjoying its cultic phase. Its followers are numerous and quite sincere in their efforts to accept universal cataclysm and  frighten children. But doubters point out there are very few of these things still in use; not nearly enough to end the world even if they do fall down. These doubters believe energies would be better spent avoiding unnecessary Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death --and I agree, but it couldn't hurt to close kitchen doors more gently too.