The world of 1984 is a world of perpetual warfare. You can see this in how Orwell imagines London itself as a bombed-out and impoverished ruin. Oceania is presented as being locked in a state of continuous war, apparently perceiving warfare itself to be a powerful tool for social control. Indeed, the effects of this lived reality are such that Julia voices to Winston her suspicion that the war itself had been entirely manufactured by the state:

The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania, "just to keep the people frightened."

The proles refer to these rocket bombs colloquially as steamers. Indeed, these attacks are so frequent that the proles seem to exhibit a hyperalertness to them:

They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly traveled faster than sound.

Thus, these rocket attacks seem to be an inescapable reality of life so far as the proles are concerned.

In book 1, chapter 8, Winston observes a steamer attack, with Orwell depicting a scene of turmoil. No matter how inescapable these attacks might be, they remain terrifying and lethal all the same. The result is panic, with the proles in a desperate rush to get off the street. The attack is devastating in its effect, destroying "an entire group of houses two hundred meters up the street." Note also that Orwell joins this image of material destruction with a vivid image relating to the human cost as Winston discovers a severed hand. Readers can easily extrapolate from this imagery any number of unknown victims killed in this attack, not to mention the countless lives lost in all those other innumerable bombings that are so frequent in the world of 1984.