bare-fingered digging and damage to hands?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Plane

Is there some way we could stat a cubic foot (or yard) of soil into some kind of creature and assign it HP and somehow depleting that HP is what transforms it into the softer stage of soil (diffuse instead of homogenous) that can actually be lifted up?

Pretty much no. GURPS is mostly interested to damage to creatures, it does a terrible job modeling damage to large homogenous objects you have to just chip away at. Which is a perfectly valid game design decision, chipping away at large inanimate objects isn't exactly dramatically interesting, but is something to remember.