A man goes suddenly blind while driving, causing a traffic jam and leaving him entirely dependent on strangers.

The Good Samaritan who drives the first blind man home steals his car, then later goes blind himself.

An ophthalmologist examines the first blind man and finds no physical or biological cause for his total blindness.

The government decides to quarantine all blind and exposed people in a rundown, long-empty mental asylum.

The doctor's wife fakes blindness to accompany her husband into quarantine and secretly keep watch over the group.

The car thief crawls toward the asylum gates to seek medical help and is shot dead by guards.

Soldiers open fire on blind internees who stray too close during a food delivery, killing five people.

The blind hoodlums seize control of the food supply and demand that all wards surrender their valuables.

The blind hoodlums demand women in exchange for food, and after starvation sets in, the women of each ward comply.

The doctor's wife sneaks up behind the hoodlum leader during a rape and stabs him in the throat with scissors.

A woman sets the hoodlums' mattress barricade on fire, burning the asylum down and dying in the process.

The blind survivors escape the burning asylum and discover that the soldiers guarding the perimeter have vanished.

The doctor's wife leads her small group into the city and finds the streets lawless, filthy, and in total collapse.

The first blind man suddenly regains his sight, and other members of the group soon recover their vision too.

The doctor's wife stands on her balcony overlooking the city as the epidemic of blindness finally begins to lift.

The epidemic of white blindness begins with a single man going blind at a traffic light and spreads rapidly through everyone he encountered. The government responds by quarantining the blind and exposed in a rundown asylum, where conditions deteriorate with alarming speed. A gang of hoodlums seizes control of the food supply and escalates their demands until they are violently exploiting the women of the other wards. The doctor's wife, secretly the only sighted person, kills the hoodlum leader with scissors, and a sacrificial fire destroys the asylum and frees the survivors. The group escapes into a city that has collapsed just as completely as the asylum, forcing them to scavenge and survive among the ruins. The epidemic finally runs its course when the first blind man regains his sight, and the city slowly begins to recover.

The epidemic's onset, the asylum's horrors, and society's collapse and recovery.

The girl with the glasses goes blind while meeting a hotel client and is later taken home by police.

The doctor goes blind at home after spending an evening researching the first blind man's inexplicable condition.

A second wave of internees arrives in the first ward, including the first blind man's wife, who reunites with her husband.

The doctor approaches armed soldiers to beg for medicine for the car thief's infected leg wound, but is refused.

The group buries the car thief in a shallow grave outside the asylum after soldiers throw a shovel over the fence.

The lavatories deteriorate into a fetid ruin, and the doctor steps in feces and breaks down in despair.

A massive influx of hundreds of new internees overwhelms the asylum's capacity and triggers a stampede of panicking blind people.

The old man with the black eyepatch arrives in the first ward, bringing a battery-powered transistor radio from the outside world.

The internees gather around the radio and take turns describing the last image each person saw before going blind.

The doctor's wife sneaks barefoot through the dark corridors at night to spy on and count the blind hoodlums.

The gang rapes are so violent that one woman from the first ward dies from her injuries on the way back.

The doctor's wife collects stagnant water and ritually washes the dead woman's body and each surviving raped woman.

The group visits the girl's apartment building and discovers a filthy, emaciated old woman who has survived alone on raw meat.

The group finds the first blind man's apartment occupied by a blind writer who has been recording the epidemic.

The old man with the eyepatch and the girl with the glasses confess their feelings and become a couple.

Behind the headline events of the epidemic lie smaller but equally significant stories of how individuals experienced the blindness and its aftermath. The early chapters trace individual cases of infection, including the girl with the glasses and the doctor, and show how quickly the asylum's conditions broke down into filth and despair. As the situation worsens, the old man with the radio provides the ward with crucial knowledge of the outside world, and the internees share the poignant last images they saw before going blind. The sexual violence committed by the hoodlums results in the death of one woman and a profound act of ritual cleansing by the doctor's wife. After escaping the asylum, the group encounters both the emaciated old woman surviving alone and a blind writer trying to document the crisis for posterity. The pool ends with a moment of quiet hope as the old man and the girl with the glasses find companionship amid the ruins.

The personal costs and quieter moments behind the epidemic's horror.

The doctor concludes the blindness is contagious and calls the government and hospital director to report an epidemic.

The first blind man recognizes the car thief's voice in the quarantine ward, and a physical fight breaks out between them.

The doctor's wife drops her pretense of blindness to treat the car thief's dangerously infected leg wound.

The car thief whispers to the doctor's wife that he knows she can see, but promises to keep her secret.

The old man's radio broadcasts that planes have crashed and the blindness epidemic has spread across the entire country.

The doctor warns his wife that confessing her sight to the other internees would turn her into everyone's servant.

The doctor's wife finds scissors in her belongings while collecting valuables and secretly hides them on a nail on the wall.

The doctor's wife discovers her husband with the girl with glasses and privately reveals to the girl that she can see.

The blind accountant seizes the dead hoodlum leader's gun and takes over, immediately tightening the group's tyrannical grip.

The internees' coordinated attack on the hoodlum barricade collapses when the blind accountant shoots two of the volunteers.

The doctor's wife descends alone into a dark grocery store basement and briefly experiences the same disorienting blindness as the others.

A stray dog licks the lost and crying doctor's wife's face, causing her to look up and spot a painted city map.

The group returns to the girl's building and finds the emaciated old woman's corpse in the doorway, still clutching the apartment keys.

Inside a crowded church, the doctor's wife notices all the statues and paintings have had their eyes covered with white cloth.

The first blind man cries out that he is blind, then opens his eyes to find his sight has fully returned.

From the first phone call reporting the epidemic to the moment sight returns, the story turns on a series of critical revelations and decisions that alter everything. The doctor's wife's secret sight becomes the group's greatest asset, nearly exposed when she treats the car thief's wound and later deliberately shared with the girl with glasses under intimate circumstances. Radio news reveals the epidemic has caused a total national collapse, raising the stakes for everyone still trapped inside the asylum. The hoodlums' tyranny survives the death of their leader when the blind accountant seizes power, and a failed coordinated uprising proves that individual courage alone cannot overcome entrenched oppression. After escaping, a series of small discoveries — a stray dog, a painted map, a dead woman's hand clutching keys, and covered eyes in a church — reveal how completely the world has transformed. The pool concludes with the pivotal moment of recovery, as the first blind man opens his eyes and sees once more.