In this paper, the local buckling of cylindrical long shells is discussed under axial pulse loads in a Hamiltonian system. Using this system, critical loads and modes of buckling of shells are reduced to symplectic eigenvalues and eigensolutions respectively. By the symplectic method, the solution of the local buckling of shells can be employed to the expansion series of symplectic eigensolutions in this system. As a result, relationships between critical buckling loads and other factors, such as length of pulse load, thickness of shells and circumferential orders, have been achieved. At the same time, symmetric and unsymmetric buckling modes have been discuss. Moreover, numerical results show that modes of post-buckling of shells can be Bamboo node-type, bending type, concave type and so on. Research in this paper provides analytical supports for ultimate load prediction and buckling failure assessment of cylindrical long shells under local axial pulse loads. © 2021 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.