  We describe a method for restoring information lost during statistical
thinning in extensive air shower simulations. By converting weighted particles
from thinned simulations to swarms of particles with similar characteristics,
we obtain a result that is essentially identical to the thinned shower, and
which is very similar to non-thinned simulations of showers. We call this
method dethinning. Using non-thinned showers on a large scale is impossible
because of unrealistic CPU time requirements, but with thinned showers that
have been dethinned, it is possible to carry out large-scale simulation studies
of the detector response for ultra-high energy cosmic ray surface arrays. The
dethinning method is described in detail and comparisons are presented with
parent thinned showers and with non-thinned showers.
