Recreate deleted thread number??

[novabandit]

I have a thread that was heavily linked to on my forums that was hard deleted (long story).

Now all those links go to the "invalid thread" page.

I was able to (from a DB backup restored onto a test forum) get the contents of the main post, which is the only one I care about, but is it possible to create a new thread in the old thread's location (thread number?)

This is reeeeeally important to me... as this thread brought more traffic to my site than nearly anything else!