A lot of people are prepared for survival in the short term. A few weeks of food, a drum of water, some basic first aid and cleaning supplies are pretty much all you need for situations like that. But what it the SHTF so bad that it stretches into long-term survival? What would have to change?

“The people who do the best (under such conditions) are not those who have prepared in an attempt to create a bubble of normalcy around them, but rather those who can adapt the fastest to changing circumstances.”
Preppers do spend a lot of time (me included) building up stores of goods and supplies which will indeed create a ‘bubble of normalcy’ around us if and when we need it. There’s nothing wrong with that! This bubble that we’ve created for ourselves will get us through most ‘disasters’ until such time that life returns to ‘normal’.
However it is extremely important to look outside that bubble in preparation for a major event, a collapse of life as we know it today.
When your own stores run out, then what?
I do believe that there will be many regions where the right communities will adapt and overcome. I believe that this will mostly occur in so called ‘rural’ or ‘country’ regions where people there already (to an extent) may be partially self-sufficient. I’m not saying that there won’t be great hardship or failure there (there certainly will), but these people stand a better chance than the vast majority of those who live shoulder-to-shoulder in the city metro regions or suburbia and have just about zero ability (or the skills, land, and resources) to even think about being self-sufficient.
When you really think about it on the most very basic of levels, to really survive a long term collapse we must produce enough food (calories) to live. That food must also be preserved for throughout the year. How many of you (us) can actually do that? Do you really know how much food that is? (It’s more than you might think)
While I know that many have the ability to successfully grow a large garden and to preserve its bounty, and there are many who raise their own livestock and likely already are living a relatively or partially self-sufficient lifestyle, the fact is that not everyone is ready or knows how, or lives in a place where it’s feasible.
If you really want to survive ‘long term’, then you must be able to adapt, to do it, to find a way to be more self-sufficient. This may involve moving somewhere else and changing your current way of life. Not many will actually do this because it is so disruptive to their current normalcy. It is not comfortable to make such a big change.

Being completely self-sufficient nowadays is just a hair shy of impossible. Many of our food crops are incapable of growth without being genetically engineered every season. The natural foods we would have foraged for are all but extinct and wild game is not nearly as plentiful as people would care to think.

For long-term survival, the mentality of self-sufficiency, this article says, essentially needs to go away. Working with others toward a common goal is the best way to go.

This article had some pretty good points and offers some good insight into how mentality needs to change in order to make prepping work. To learn more, go to Modern Survival Blog.