´óÏó´«Ã½

I can never quite understand this irrational fear of Disabled people - why the need to portray them yet again as the "evil" ones? Cliched and tired.

I listened to the unabridged book, that this movie is based on, and was frequently annoyed throughout.
No doubt there would be some pandemonium, but I felt there were no real, already skilled, and highly organized blind people, floating around in the author's scenario, and should a real situation like that occur, there would be. In fact, eventually they'd probably find a way to bring the infrastructure back up, in bits and pieces. The token old visually impaired man, was used to try and convey some philosophy, which was alright, for what it was, but even newly blinded people in that kind of scene, would probably demonstrate some aptitude for creatively figuring out another way of getting lots more done. I'm not discounting institutional effects, and mob mentality running into chaos.
Still I will not look forward to having do thwart the damage done, by the assumptions I can only imagine this movie will bring to the public at large, if it stays true to the book. Of course the screenplay could be worse, or perhaps, one could hope, better.

There was an original blind man in Jose Saramango's book 'Blindness'.. He was herded up by accident and used his abilities to help the gang identify objects they stole and type braille.. As far as I know there was no reference to him being old..

So I am assuming you do not mean this man and are thinking of the 'old man with eye patch'?

I assumed the reason people who were already visually impaired were missed out- was the same reason that those who could still see were not identified in the book (except for the docs wife), because they were scared of unreasonable demands making them into sort of slaves for the whole population and so kept it quiet.

Would have been less of a book if they'd sorted themselves out straight away.. authors are allowed a bit of poetic licence.