"We suddenly saw how people reacted in the event of massive social upheaval, and the way that the little problems in your life don't go away. You don't stop being frightened of spiders just because the world's blown up"
About this Quote
Pegg's intent is to drag catastrophe back down to human scale. "Massive social upheaval" is the headline event; the punchline is that your private weather keeps happening anyway. It's an argument against the way we romanticize crisis as a clarifying force, the idea that disaster automatically produces courage, community, or purpose. His framing admits something less cinematic and more recognizable: people keep being people, with all the irrational hang-ups and mundane needs that don't wait politely for history to end.
The subtext reads like a post-9/11 and post-2008 sensibility, later sharpened by pandemic hindsight: collective trauma doesn't dissolve individual mess; it often amplifies it. Under pressure, the "little problems" don't shrink into perspective so much as compete for bandwidth with existential dread. Pegg, whose comedy often thrives on genre-savvy realism (zombies, aliens, action-hero tropes), uses the spider to remind us that survival isn't a glow-up. It's continuity. The world can change overnight; your brain, annoyingly, keeps its regular programming.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Pegg, Simon. (2026, January 16). We suddenly saw how people reacted in the event of massive social upheaval, and the way that the little problems in your life don't go away. You don't stop being frightened of spiders just because the world's blown up. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-suddenly-saw-how-people-reacted-in-the-event-123428/
Chicago Style
Pegg, Simon. "We suddenly saw how people reacted in the event of massive social upheaval, and the way that the little problems in your life don't go away. You don't stop being frightened of spiders just because the world's blown up." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-suddenly-saw-how-people-reacted-in-the-event-123428/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We suddenly saw how people reacted in the event of massive social upheaval, and the way that the little problems in your life don't go away. You don't stop being frightened of spiders just because the world's blown up." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-suddenly-saw-how-people-reacted-in-the-event-123428/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.







