Invisibillity Cloak Could Protect Against Earthquakes

This is definitely one of the most unexpected applications of the work on metamaterials. The downside of transferring the risk to another area (because waves continue just as large beyond the cloaked area) is not such a big deal when you think about the sort of buildings you really want to protect. For example, nuclear power plants in earthquake prone places.

The article wasn't too clear about how "theoretical" this is though - it says they have designed the elastic cloak but are looking for a suitable material....