The bleakness of humanity

So, I just finished watching the movie "Blindness" (based off the book of the same name - which I have yet to read), and it really got me thinking about how I would react in a situation like that.
Here's the set up - people spontaneously go blind so the government throws around a hundred of them in an old sanitarium where they are basically left to fend for themselves. The situation rapidly deteriorates both in terms of sanitary/habitable conditions and moral fortitude. Just imagine, living blindly in fetid squalor with a hundred other people, vying for control of the insufficient amount of food they give you.

In the film, the inhabitants quickly lose their sense of morality and descend into a survival of the fittest mentality, with one of the 3 Wards (each having 30-40 people) assumes control of all the food because they are the strongest and have some weapons. At first, they take the other people's valuables in exchange for food, but once that runs out, they exchange food for women. (While the film wasn't phenomenal overall, I do think it did depict the horror and depravity of that scene quite compellingly).

My question here is this - in such an extreme situation, would people (or myself specifically) be able to retain their morality and (in essence) their humanity? Beyond the question of "would they be able to" there is the question "Should they/should they be expected to retain their morality", and why?
When it comes down to it, are we fundamentally any different from animals?


After watching "Blindness" and reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", I'm confronted by the bleakness of humanity and how quickly people are ready to devolve into an animalistic state. Of course, both present not only the bleakness of humanity, but also those who weather the storm so to speak and retain the essence of the human-spirit. But in those books/film, those who are willing to fight for their humanity are so few and far between.