What are the halachos of mourning over dead batteries? Do we say Baruch Dayan Haemes? Is there a period of shiva during which other batteries from the same pack should be removed from their device and surrounded by unrelated batteries? What about shloshim and the 11/12 months? Are the times affected by the size and capacity of the battery - eg. if your electric car batteries die, is that a longer period than a coin cell?
Please cite sources where possible.
One of the earliest biblical references we have to mourning practices, and in particular the idea of visiting mourners at a shiva house comes from the story of the Ma'achah family, who were mourning intensely after removing many dead batteries from their home.
As we learn in Shmuel II:20:15:
ויבאו ויצרו עליו באבלה בית המעכה וישפכו סללה אל־העיר ותעמד בחל
And they came and joined with him in pain, during the mourning in the Ma'achah home, who had poured out their batteries in the city, making them into a pile.
Mourning the loss of batteries was in-built into creation itself.
Bereishis 1:2 notes how the world was תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ - "unformed and void"
The Torah Temimah writes on this expressly in the footnote:
ובטורי אבן הקשה עליו ופירש פירוש אחר, אבל פירושו דחוק כפי שיתבאר להמעין
And the battery was dead (lit. hard) as stone for Him - and this can be explained alternatively as (being in) "a state of mourning", in other words, all its energy had become scarce as will be explained
