tornadoken
Thanks for your informative post.
I'm sure the vast majority of the populations of USSR UK USA and most of the rest of humanity thought it was for real.
But we now know what the CIA's assessment of the real Soviet threat was and we now know what Krushchev thought about actually starting a war, nuclear or conventional, it was never going to happen (well lets say it had a very low probability of occurring).
The Conspiracy comes from the very top of the hierarchy in this very authoritarian society, you might call them the 'investors in British interests' who use Intelligence services and the media to create reality. (See Edward Bernays), The Conspiracy is about using public money to develop new technologies that the very top of the hierarchy will benefit from when the technologies become viable and profitable and are 'privatised', So V-Bombers transform into Civil Airlines and mass tourism, Nuclear technologies transform into Power stations and the Nuclear Industry, and Ballistic missiles transform into commercial satellite launch vehicles for telecoms and SKY etc. While the UK population were undergoing the harsh austerity and fear of post war Britain, the weapons manufacturers were fighting over the 1/8th of GDP that was going into these not fit for purpose 'weapons' systems.
So there was no real threat and the threat was exaggerated in the media, the population are kept frightened and stump up the cash to pay for these largely useless and expensive weapons. So in order to maintain the 'big lie' as Dr Goebbels liked to call it, the population are fed a lot of scare-mongering 'information' about the potential threat from a perceived enemy. It's interesting to see that the Mig's in Korea had Russian versions of Rolls Royce Nenes in them and that the USSR was largely funded by credits from the Bank of England between the wars. The so called 'Iron Curtain' was somehow not impervious to western capital investment and trade. Fordson Tractors were featured on Soviet stamps in 1922, Standard Oil did very well out of the Communist revolution as did Rio Tinto, and many more.
Western monopolistic capitalists like John ('control everything') Rockerfeller could see a lot of efficiency advantages in the 'Socialist' means of production.
The main threat from the Soviets was ideological. The problem with Socialism was that the workers in the UK might actually believe in it and want to start a revolution of their own here!