I was trying to ask how to use a seed phrase without a HW, generated from a HW in something like electrum. AKA -seed compatibility.
The short answer is yes. If you do have some funds tied up in the alt-coins you'll have to use a wallet compatible with that coin, since Electrum is bitcoin only. But even as it is, if for example, you were talking about a Trezor hardware wallet, you would still be able to use the Trezor Suite software for some time to come. As long as there are still nodes running for the various coins' blockchains, you'll be able to transact with your coins.
And could this be exploited by governments to attack HW's had the answer to the previous question been not compatible. But this seems like a non issue.
For the most part this second part is a non-issue for bitcoin, or truly decentralized alts such as XMR, but despite the claims to the contrary, but in reality very few alts are as decentralized one would be led to believe. If for example, the United States deemed some alt is an illegal security, they could force VPS providers to stop hosting nodes. A significant number of alts' nodes are hosted on cloud servers, so if that happened the majority of nodes for those coins would cease to exist over night. No nukes needed.
