I wonder if the modern interpretation of the Mayan calendar, in that the world was to end on December 27th, 2001 was incorrect. That our calculations hadn’t accounted for something and 2016 is the year the 5th world ends. This would explain the escalating tragedy as icons and celebrities fall, and as death piles onto death.

Or perhaps the 5th world had died and we are in the tumultuous birthing of the 6th and what we are seeing now is the visible manifestation of those changes just now hitting the public consciousness with the deaths of iconic or, at the least, famous people.