A method of calculating the creep deflections and predicting the creep collapse of a thin-walled circular cylindrical shell, subject to uniform external radial pressure and arbitrary temperature gradients, is shown. This method may also be applied to investigate the behavior of a shell subject to time-dependent temperature gradients and deformations due to other inelastic causes. The set of simultaneous differential equations of equilibrium in terms of creep, thermal, and other inelastic strains is presented. Applications of this method to long cylindrical shells are illustrated by two numerical examples.