Headscratchers / Arachnophobia

• So it is shown that the General mated with a relatively "normal" spider in order to produce a nest, but later on that spider has apparently became a "Queen" did the spider mutate or something? including turning into a tarantula and becoming venomous?
  • The spider expert actually explains this. When talking about the soldier spiders, it's pointed out that they're sterile:
    Atherton: In this first generation, the original male also produced a queen, and together they will construct a primary nest which the queen will guard. But eventually, she will create reproductive offspring of her own. And when that happens, this town is dead... and the next town... and the next town... and the next one, and so on.
  • The house spider didn't mutate. As Atherton explained, the General managed to produce a queen. So a queen was made from the Common House Spider. And this Queen would create another nest.
• How were there only three deaths from the spiders in a span of what looks like a few weeks? Considering how many of them there were and the fact they seemed to bite anything that moved, shouldn't the entire human and animal population been wiped out in a matter of days?
  • Probably due to the location, we aren't exactly shown how far away the house is from the actual town, but they probably had a good few miles of forest and field to clear before they got to town, they probably captured the wildlife around the house and only made their way into the town when they had ran dry of other sources of food, the reason they never took out the family was probably because the Queen had made her nest in their basement, and only went full gear towards them, because of the exterminator spraying the place.
  • Spiders are cold-blooded, so they don't actually need to hunt every day. They probably wouldn't even have dispersed as far as they did, if not for new generations of spiderlings' drive to spread out so as to avoid cannibalizing one another.