I had it one rather bad on JFK-GVA.
Really mininal service (food was flying around, so it didn't really made sense anyway), they tried to fly over it, failed, beside, failed, under it, failed.

At the end of the day, I drank a glass more wine, and got some sleep

Turbulences seem dangerous but it's very rare that a plane goes down because of them (unless it's landing/starting). Most of the time, you rather have people who get killed/hurt because they are not wearing the belt.
To give you an idea what an airplane can sustain, I recall (It was an Asian carrier, not sure it was Korean...) that once in an MD11, once from the FC activated the thrust reversers in flight, you can imagine what kind of constraints that puts on the airframe. There were fatalities, but not because the plane went down...