Combine a Scorpio Sun’s orientation to psychologically intense confrontations with a Cancer Moon’s need for a secure home life and the result is a Sun/Moon pairing that’s passionate and powerful, magnetic and mysterious, compelling and self-controlled, armed with enormous reserves of emotional courage and a penchant for supporting people and causes “left for dead” by the rest of society. According to astrologer Jefferson Anderson, the textbook Scorpio/Cancer individual excels at anything requiring equal parts emotional intensity (Scorpio) and emotional intelligence (Cancer):

Never content with surface impressions, you like to probe beneath appearances to discover the genuine meaning and significance of things. Depth, imagination, and shrewd realism combine to help you excel at just about anything — and once absorbed in some endeavor, your concentration and dedication are matchless. (Source)

The Scorpio/Cancer capacity for “concentration and dedication” makes this pairing a particularly attentive parent, the sort who is extremely protective of their home and family — so much so that they can easily take things more than a bit overboard should they or those close to them be threatened. To illustrate: back in the 1980s the Soviet military set up a network of nuclear devices code-named “PERIMETR”, designed to automatically obliterate the entire planet should the U.S. ever attack the Russian homeland. Using its initial date of operation as its date of birth, the PERIMETR system is a Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon. (Chart)

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey observe that Scorpio/Cancers can lay dormant for long periods during which time they’re all “sweetness and light” only go to into “exterminator mode” on a moment’s notice at which point they will seek out the “sweet satisfaction of revenge”. (Source) PERIMETR was designed to, quite literally, lay dormant for long periods of time only to go into “exterminator mode” on a moment’s notice for the sole purpose of seeking the “sweet satisfaction of revenge” on an almost unimaginable scale. Also known as “The Dead Hand”, PERIMETR is for all intents and purposes the real life actualization of the “Doomsday Device” envisioned in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb:

Scorpio/Cancer is a very emotionally courageous pairing so here is something to contemplate, the implications of which require a good dose of emotional courage to process: PERIMETR is still active, still ready to obliterate the entire planet, and still plugged into the same computer it was originally plugged into back in 1984. (Source) Scorpio is ruled by Pluto while Cancer by the Moon so the Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon pairing is similar energetically to a Moon/Pluto aspect, which astrologer Adrian Ross Duncan says should “develop the psychological skills that come so naturally”. If you feel the need to develop some good psychological coping skills in order to get your mind around the fact there’s an active Cold War era doomsday device still sitting around ready to blow us all to kingdom come, well rest assured you’re not the only one. As Peter Sellers’s puts it in Dr. Strangelove, “Why would you build such a thing? It’s absolute madness”.

While not technically classified, PERIMETR’s existence is still largely hidden from public awareness despite there having been two books recently published about it — The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman and Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon by Peter D. Smith. Both Scorpio and Cancer are famously tight-lipped about what goes on behind closed doors so it’s fitting that according to a 2007 article in Wired Magazine, “the Russians still won’t discuss [PERIMETR], and Americans at the highest levels — including former top officials at the State Department and White House — say they’ve never heard of it. One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase.” (Source)

Even if one can justify the creation of such a device under a theory of deterrence, it sure would have been nice if somebody had thought to disarm the thing once the Cold War wound down. Unfortunately, Scorpio doesn’t forgive, Cancer never forgets, and neither sign is known for letting go of grudges very easily. This is doubly the case when the grudges pertain to the sanctity of the home(land).

Using its on-air debut date as its date of birth, the show “24” starring Kiefer Sutherland as gonzo counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer is also a Scorpio/Cancer. (Chart) According to Wikipeida, the show routinely deals with themes similar to those raised by a system such as PERIMETR:

. . . a typical plot has Bauer racing against the clock as he attempts to thwart multiple terrorist plots, including presidential assassination attempts, weapons of mass destruction detonations, cyber attacks, as well as conspiracies which deal with government and corporate corruption. (Source)

Astrologer Bil Tierney says the Scorpio/Cancer pairing possesses “heightened emotional sensitivity” and must routinely retreat for purposes of emotional regeneration or they’ll risk reaching their bursting point. During the show’s nine plus seasons on the air, Sutherland portrayed Jack Bauer as a paranoid, high-strung individual who never retreated and was thus almost always at his emotional bursting point. In his character’s defense, there was no denying his dedication to fiercely (Scorpio) defending his culture of origin (Cancer) from threats both foreign and domestic:

Of course, it’s not all doom-and-gloom for this pairing. Being so attuned to the watery world of emotions, Scorpio/Cancer often possesses a sense of humor that’s very well-attuned to the current psychological zeitgeist. Whoever came up with the line “It’s always darkest before it goes pitch black” was likely a Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon.

Speaking of things going pitch-black, Scorpio/Cancer may make for one hell of a doomsday weapon but it also makes for a great scientist, doctor, or social worker attempting to prevent doomsday type events from occurring or helping others handle their aftermath. To illustrate: using its registration date as its date of birth, the website RadCast.org is a Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon. (Chart) Established in the fall of 2013, the site compiles radiation readings taken by citizen-scientists across the U.S. and makes them publicly available in an easy-to-use online format. The site’s creators were inspired to build it after realizing that the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear planet in Japan is being completely covered up by the corporate media. Radcast is, in effect, operating as a detective (Scorpio) whose applied their penetrating investigative skills to defending home, food, family, and country (Cancer) from threats more than a bit similar to those posed by a nuclear doomsday device such as PERIMETR:

Stella Hyde says Scorpios are the “Vampire Slayers” of the zodiac while Cancer Moons have an instinctual knack for jobs involving property management such as lighthouse keeping. (Source) Radcast.org is essentially a crowd sourced slayer of the vampire that is nuclear radiation (Scorpio), one that operates as an information lighthouse (Cancer). It does so at a time when corporate lies, media disinformation, government cover-ups, and large scale denial are monsters (Scorpio) in the closet (Cancer), ones every bit as nefarious as automated mass murder machines like PERIMETR. Scorpio is the sign of the death and destruction but also of radical honesty and deep self-awareness while Cancer Moons require healthy home lives in order to survive. You can thus leave it to a Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon like Radcast.org to be one of the few organizations that is radically aware (Scorpio) about the real deep-level threats to our homes and families (Cancer).

About the Author: Matt Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults at his contact page.